CAPE'S MILLIE LIMBAUGH, FRIEND TO ALL, DIES AT HER HOME AT 74

LAURA JOHNSTON

It didn't take "Millie" Limbaugh long to make friends whether it was through her music or her knack for playing bridge. And once she knew you, she always remembered your birthday.

"Millie never knew a stranger. She was your friend if you just had a minute," said Mary Frances Kinder, a longtime friend of the Limbaugh family.

Mildred "Millie" Limbaugh died Thursday, March 3, 2000, at her Cape Girardeau home. She was 74.

The matriarch of a prominent Cape Girardeau family, her husband, attorney Rush H. Limbaugh Jr., died Dec. 8, 1990.

Visitation will be from 4 to 8 p.m. Saturday at Ford and Sons Mount Auburn Funeral Chapel.

Funeral will be at 2 p.m. Sunday at Centenary United Methodist Church with burial in Memorial Park.

With Limbaugh's death, Cape Girardeau will lack a bright spirit and a jokester, friends said.

"She loved a joke, and I had one for her every time I visited," said Richard Esicar. Millie loved to laugh -- even at herself, at times.

Esicar often visited Limbaugh and would take her on short excursions. Recently they visited Old McDonald's Farm near Kelso where Limbaugh enjoyed seeing the buffalo and camel.

When the camel stuck out its tongue and licked Millie, "she just laughed. She was such fun to be around," Esicar said. "I sure will miss her."

Anyone who met Limbaugh would attest to her good humor, said state Sen. Peter Kinder, son of Mary Frances Kinder. "You can see that both her sons have good doses of her sense of humor."

"Her life wasn't always easy, but she always saw the bright side," Kinder said.

Kinder grew up with Limbaugh's sons, Rush III and David. As children and teen-agers they often gathered at the Limbaugh home. "You were always welcome in Millie's home," Kinder said.

It didn't matter if you were friends or a fan of her sons, radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh III and syndicated columnist and lawyer David Limbaugh, he said. Millie would make time for visitors, said Kinder.

When Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush met Rush and his mother last summer at her home, it was a great event for Bush, Kinder said. "She met the high and the mighty but treated everyone the same," he said. "She had this magnetism about her. People knew that she had a goodness."

People often stopped by the family home once they realized Millie Limbaugh was Rush's mother. Kinder said, "I can just imagine people seeing the billboard signs and saying let's stop by to see her -- and they did in big numbers." Visitors would stop by or take her to dinner or just visit during the afternoon.

"You were always able to find her. She made friends of everyone that she met," Kinder said. "She was a great ambassador for Cape. She had time for them -- more time than most of us would have had."

Limbaugh liked to make friends and did so easily. She had a great memory and marked friends' birthdays on her calendars, calling them on their special day.

"I don't know if she had a secret book that she looked it up in, but she always remembered," Esicar said. He always got a call from Millie on his birthday. So when it was her birthday, Esicar wanted to return the favor.

"I waited until it was 2 a.m. and then called to say I wanted to be the first to wish her happy birthday. It didn't make her mad that I had called so late. She just laughed."

Limbaugh seldom complained about her life or her health once she became ill. "She never complained," Esicar said. In fact, she always inquired about his health during their visits.

"She had this outlook on life that was unreal," he said.

Mary Frances Kinder said Millie was "extremely unselfish" and a "gentle person."

Even in her last conversations she was upbeat and unselfish, she said. "She never wanted to make you uncomfortable or unhappy," she said. If you played bridge with her -- Limbaugh was an avid player -- she "would never make you nervous, even if you weren't as good as she was. She was a very giving person."

The women often sang together, both at civic gatherings and at church. Limbaugh was a member of Centenary United Methodist Church.

Briefly a big-band singer in Chicago, "she shared her music a lot," Mary Frances Kinder said.

Peter Kinder remembers his mother and Millie Limbaugh singing "both the silly and the sacred." A talented alto, when Limbaugh was invited to sing last year at the Missouri Federation of Republican Women's meeting in Jefferson City, she and the Kinders made a trip of it. "She would sing on request" once people recognized her skill, he said.

But it was her children's accomplishments that made her proud.

"When Rusty (Rush III) became a success, she was so pleased to be an extension of that," Mary Frances Kinder said. "She was proud of David, her younger son, as well. Her sons were the lights of her life, and her family was a source of pride and great happiness," she said.