The Beginning of Dear Prudence
The year was 1963. The husband of English-born Prudence Morris McCoy had just died of a sudden heart attack, leaving behind a three year old daughter, a whack of bills and a young wife with no formal job training. Prudence Morris McCoy was suddenly on her own, three thousand miles from her family in England and, as she later recalled in her autobiography, Pointing the Way, “… I barely had twopence to my name. I wasn’t quite broke, but I was badly bent”.
To help make ends meet, and stay at home with her little girl, Prudence began writing and selling a newsletter of practical solutions to household problems.
Having come from a long line of hard-working, pragmatic and clever English and Scottish women who had raised large families on little money, Prudence Morris McCoy had accumulated a treasure trove of inexpensive solutions to everyday wrinkles in domestic life. She called them ‘hints’, just as her favorite aunt Penelope had done and dubbed her newsletter “Helpful Hints for Harried Housewives”.
In the beginning, Prudence sold her monthly newsletter door-to-door, pulling her toddler daughter – Prudence Mary McCoy and bundles of the newsletter through the neighborhood in the little girl's red wagon.
Always the proper Englishwoman, Prudence wore a dress, coat and proper shoes, through summer heat and winter chill. Her majestic bearing and demeanor quickly earned her the title of ‘The Queen of Queens’ on the streets. Her daughter was dubbed The Princess.
The newsletter was an instant success. With new 'hints' in every newsletter, many submitted by loyal readers, the newsletter quickly became an essential staple in thousands of homes throughout the boroughs of New York City. When readers began to write Prudence with questions of their own, Prudence was happy to provide hints for every problem.
The popularity of the newsletter caught the attention of Jeffrey Symcox, an aspiring young newspaper publisher who had just started a weekly paper called 'The Back Fence Bulletin', affectionately known to its readers as the "BFB".
Symcox filled the "BFB" with neighborhood news, local tidbits and juicy gossip, just the sort of ‘news’ his readers might get over their own backyard fences. Prudence McCoy’s column of helpful hints was just the sort of thing his readers loved.
Symcox convinced Prudence to change the name of her column to “PruPointers” and in 1965 he began to feature "Dear Prudence" in the BFB.
Over the next twenty-five years, “PruPointers” continued its phenomenal growth. The column was syndicated in papers around the world. Prudence wrote a series of hugely successful books –‘PruPointers’ -- that provided helpful hints for her growing audience. It seemed that everyone had a problem, big or small. Prudence had the answers.
When Prudence Morris McCoy died in 2005, after more than forty years of writing “Dear Prudence”, readers around the world mourned her passing. For many, it was as though they had lost a beloved and trusted family member.
In 2006, “Dear Prudence” returned. Despite her colorful and successful career in publishing, Prudence Mary had been convinced by Jeffrey Symcox to continue her mother’s work.
From the moment she agreed to pick up where her mother had left off, however, Prudence Mary McCoy,'Pru2’, as she’s affectionately called by Jeffrey Symcox, the staff at “Dear Prudence” and her millions of fans, made it clear that she was not going to be her mother.
'Pru2' was not a proper Englishwoman. She was not reclusive, taciturn and polite. She was not interested in treading water and doing things the ‘right way’. She was going to do things her way. Things were going to change.
'Pru2' told Jeffrey Symcox, the publisher of “PruPointers”, she was “going to drag ‘PruPointers’ kicking and screaming into the new millennium or put it out of its bloody misery”.