Match The Mom To The NPR Personalities

LIANE HANSEN, host:

And now, for Mother's Day, a special tribute featuring some very grateful NPR folks honoring their moms.

(Soundbite of guitar music, "Unforgettable)

SUSAN STAMBERG: I'm Susan Stamberg and having such a lovely time thinking about my mother, Ann Rosalind Rosenberg Levitt. She was the glass of fashion almost until the day she died. She was the kind of lady, a real New York City lady who, when she moved to Washington, D.C., wore her gloves and stockings even to backyard barbecues. That's the kind of gal she was.

So, one time I put her on the radio because she was running out of white cotton gloves. So I looked all over for them and I just couldnt come up with any white cotton gloves. Oh no, she said. I mean, to her that was an end of an era.

Ms. ANN ROSALIND ROSENBERG LEVITT: I feel that I'm not dressed unless I'm wearing gloves. I feel naked.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STMABERG: Well, do you know what happened? The next week, in the mail, 35 pairs for my mother and I brought them over to her. She wanted all of them and she was very pleased with her new gloves and with our listeners.

Ms. ELIZABETH MAGLIOZZI: Hello. And welcome to CAR TALK on National Public Radio with my boys, Click and Clack, the Tappet brothers. Hello, boys.

Mr. TOM MAGLIOZZI, host:

Boy, youre getting professional at this.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. RAY MAGLIOZZI, host:

Hi, Mother.

Mr. T. MAGLIOZZI: That is my mother. Not his mother.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. T. MAGLIOZZI: My mother Elizabeth - what's your middle name?

Mr. R. MAGLIOZZI: Jones.

Ms. MAGLIOZZI: Maria.

Mr. T. MAGLIOZZI: Maria?

Ms. MAGLIOZZI: Maria.

Mr. T. MAGLIOZZI: I never knew that?

Mr. R. MAGLIOZZI: I never knew that?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. R. MAGLIOZZI: She changes it all the time.

Mr. T. MAGLIOZZI: Elizabeth - my father is in the studio. He said he never heard it either.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. R. MAGLIOZZI: She's full of surprises, isn't she?

Mr. T. MAGLIOZZI: She just made it up. That's where you got it from. She makes up everything.

Ms. MAGLIOZZI: Dont make me laugh.

NINA TOTENBERG: My mother, the late great Melanie Totenberg, had a Gracie Allen streak in her. And the best story that illustrates that is that one day in her office - she was a real estate broker - one of the brokers came in and said, excuse me, but I found some car keys in the refrigerator. Do these belong to anybody? And my mother said, oh, those are mine. I put them there with the fish, that way I wouldnt forget the fish for dinner.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. T. MAGLIOZZI: Doug said we may get some calls about...

Mr. R. MAGLIOZZI: He was prepping my mother. We're in the green room...

Mr. T. MAGLIOZZI: Yes. The green...

Ms. MAGLIOZZI: What green room?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. T. MAGLIOZZI: And he says we may get some calls about people asking about mothering. And she said why would they ask me? I failed.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. MAGLIOZZI: We'll have more of your calls coming right up, so dont touch that dial, because if you do, the end of your lipstick will fall off.

Mr. T. MAGLIOZZI: Not lipstick. Dipstick.

Ms. MAGLIOZZI: Dipstick.

(Soundbite of laughter)

ARI SHAPIRO: My grandmother, Sylvia, who passed away a couple of years ago, was a very eccentric character. She worked in a carnival. She was a fortune teller. She sold wigs at various points in her life. And she was just an utter hoot. She wore fake eyelashes her whole life. And so, I sort of think of my mom as like the straight woman in contrast to her mother's zaniness.

My mom is Elaine Shapiro and she loves the outdoors. She, every summer, goes hiking in Oregon. And she loves wildflowers, so she will hike following the wildflowers from the Columbia Gorge, where they bloom early in the spring, all the way up to the top of Mount Hood as the snow melts over the course of the summer. I think there are some people who would get really thrilled about, you know, the huge flowering lilac bushes or the orchids or - my mom is interested in sort of looking underneath the things that are immediately visible to the naked eye and finding the things that other people might not notice.

OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON: Hello, greetings from Dakar. This is Ofeibea Quist-Arcton. I am, in fact, from Ghana and that's where my mother, Grace Annie Abokuma Namensa(ph) married Edward Quist-Arcton, was also born. We called her simply, Ma.

Mother to five children, four girls and one boy. We were a typical Ghanaian family, but we lived abroad. And she always remembered those who were far away from family, especially during the festive seasons. For a while, we lived in Rome, in Italy, and Ma would gather all the Ghanaians from all over who weren't with family, who weren't going to have a family Christmas dinner, and she'd cook for everyone. So we learned to share. She was a marvelous mother. I mean, I lost her a week after my 20th birthday, but she's always in our minds. She reminds us that humanity is the most important thing. Long live Ma.

CARL KASELL: My mother's name was Leila May Mitchell. My mother grew up on a farm outside of my hometown of Goldsboro, North Carolina. And she really developed into a wonderful, wonderful cook. Now, she learned from her mother on the farm. And these women never followed a recipe, they just handed down from generation to generation what they knew about cooking. You take a little bit of this, a little bit of that, honey. And she was also a great philosopher, I think one of the best philosophers I've ever met.

At times in our lives when - there were four kids, by the way, two boys and two girls - at times when things were rough, she would sit down and talk to us and help us talk it through. But the last thing she would say would be, dont worry, honey, everything's going to turn out all right. And it usually did.

HANSEN: NPR's Carl Kasell, Susan Stamberg, Car Guys: Tom and Ray Magliozzi, Nina Totenberg, Ari Shapiro and Ofeibea Quist-Arcton.

Our Mother's Day remembrance was produced by Alice Winkler. And you can go to our website at NPR.org to see if you can match the mom to these NPR personalities.

This is NPR's WEEKEND EDITION.

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