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(This piece originally ran in the University of Dayton Quarterly in the summer of 2000 following the launch of the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop.)

A treasured gift - a clock with a smiling photo of Bill and Erma Bombeck - sits on my cluttered office desk.

"The clock photo thing was a part of her office. The picture had been changed. (She probably had Paul what's-his-name Newman in it)," wrote Bill Bombeck in a funny, touching thank-you note after the Erma Bombeck Conference on Popular American Humor at the University of Dayton. "The success was beyond my wildest dreams."

The scrawled note and gift illustrate what made the events honoring beloved humorist Erma Bombeck so magical. For four days, we laughed. But we were also deeply moved by the Bombeck family's willingness to share the personal - from their memories to 41 banker's boxes full of manuscripts, columns, correspondence and other evidence of a full, creative life.

Her children listened to scholars analyze their mother's work, which more often found its way as clippings in women's letters to friends than as footnotes in scholarly papers. Andy Bombeck, a school teacher, conceded that it was "a little weird" but intriguing to listen to college professors talk about his mother's gift of humor. When he was growing up, Matt Bombeck, now a television writer, had no idea what his mother did for a living. "We told everybody that she was a syndicated Communist."

Nearly four years after Erma's death, Phil Donahue's touching eulogy replayed at the luncheon presentation of the Bombeck papers brought fresh tears to the eyes of her daughter, Betsy. "We shall never see the likes of her again. She was real and brought us down to earth - gently, generously and with brilliant humor. When the scholars gather hundreds of years from now to learn about us, they can't know it all if they don't read Erma," he said.

Any trace of tears quickly evaporated into peals of laughter. "The reason we're here is that Bill Bombeck finally got around to cleaning out Erma's desk," quipped neighbor and "Family Circus" cartoonist Bil Keane. "When I die, my wife is going to donate my papers to Goodwill."

As I think back over those few extraordinary days, I remember the one-liners. Feisty Liz Carpenter's description of herself and Erma: "the Thelma and Louise of the ERA movement." Art Buchwald's one-word deadpan, "sex," when asked why he and Erma became such close friends.

But I always come back to one line. In a video, Erma retold the story of how Brother Tom Price, faculty adviser to the University of Dayton's literary magazine, gave her confidence when he said to her "three magic words" every young, insecure writer yearns to hear: "You can write."

In his letter, Bill Bombeck described the clock as "a remembrance from Erma (and Bill) on the anniversary of her passing."

For me, this clock will always symbolize a moment in time when Erma's family, her friends and other gifted writers came together to remember, to laugh, to honor a woman who took those three magic words to heart.

- Teri Rizvi

Teri Rizvi is the founder and director of the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop at the University of Dayton, where she serves as executive director of strategic communications.