I posted this elsewhere but wanted to share my warm memory of Joyce Brothers:
It was the programming person for my law school's speaker group, (before answering machine were the norm). During summer break, my parents had gotten used to people calling at home from offices like those of wonderful speakers like Jane Pauley and Andy Rooney and Ellen Burstyn, to talk over their plans and topics for social issues and entertainment matters, in what was called the "Harvard Law School Forum." (They didn't get paid at a very adamant rule of the law school, but everyone tried to treat them really nicely, of course!).
Joyce Brothers, it happened, decided one evening to just pick up the phone herself rather than have her terrific assistant do it, and my dad got the call while I was out. (For some reason, I remember what i saw that night, The Dance and the Railroad at the Public.) My friend Keith relayed the next day my father having been on the phone with him asking, "Do you know where Freddie is? Dr. Joyce Brothers is trying to reach him."
Keith called me the next day and burst out with [as if I were a patient of Dr. Brothers or something]: "Who the [cuss word deleted] are you that Dr. Joyce Brothers called you? And at home yet?"
It didn't work out with dates for her to speak that year, but I had such lovely conversations with her - and really, she never tried to analyze anything I said, LOL - just a warm, delightful lady, who while she was planning to do a speech, was genuinely interested in what the students would be interested in hearing about.
