NATIONAL AWARD GOES TO MILLIE LIMBAUGH

The mother of one of the most well-known men in America recently received national recognition herself.

Millie Limbaugh, whose son is conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, was named Honorary Homemaker of the Year by Eagle Forum, a national conservative pro-family organization headed by Phyllis Schlafly.

But the Cape Girardeau woman Friday played down the award. She said providence has more to do with her son's success than anything she did as a mother. Her youngest son, David, is a Cape Girardeau attorney and city councilman.

"I have so many friends who have children of the same age, and they are all good boys," Limbaugh said. "Maybe it says something about those times. I think things were simpler then, and all the mothers stayed home with their kids."

Millie compared her feelings toward her son's achievements to the way a mother feels about a child who becomes a minister.

"They realize that some of them just have a calling," she said. "I feel like that about Rusty."

She remembers a time when she and her husband, the late Rush Limbaugh Jr., doubted whether Rush III -- or "Rusty" as she still refers to her eldest son -- would succeed in the world.

"He was always very inquisitive. Very smart," Limbaugh said. "I can remember when he was only a little guy, and he asked his dad, `Who came before God?'

"But when it came to school, David was always a better student than Rusty. Rush (Jr.) used to wonder whether Rusty was smart enough to make it."

But as Rush III dropped out of college and was fired from jobs in the only profession he loved, radio, a mother's intuition believed things would change for the better.

"I just knew something was going to happen to him. That he was going to be somebody," she said. "When he was struggling and quit school, I thought that he had blown it.

"Then he got fired from a radio job in Pittsburgh, and it really hurt his ego to have to come home for six months," Millie said. "I felt sorry for him."

But after a successful local radio talk show in Sacramento, Calif., Limbaugh started a syndicated show from New York in 1988. The show has since become the most listened-to in the nation.

Her son's enormous success and popularity extends to Millie Limbaugh. She constantly receives mail, gifts and telephone calls -- mostly from well-meaning admirers of Rush.

Last week, she was invited to speak to the Northwestern Illinois Conservative Council at Rockford, and at the Eagle Forum award banquet in St. Louis, she signed autographs.

"I never could understand why someone would want an autograph," she said.

Although the majority of calls and letters she's received are complimentary, not all have been. A couple of years ago she got a letter from, she guessed, a "feminist."

"It was really ugly," Millie said. "It let me have it for having such a dastardly son, but used a lot worse words than that."

Millie also was quoted in a National Enquirer article on her son. After the story ran, the writer -- "a very nice man," she said -- called her and asked for her reaction.

"I said, `Well, it could have been worse.'"

Millie has long since stopped keeping a scrap book of articles written about her now famous son. She was unable to keep pace.

But she said she loves the attention. "I'm like a little kid. I'm tickled to death."

And what would Rush Jr.'s reaction have been to the notoriety given to the son he doubted would amount to much.

"It would have given him new life, and I think Rush would have been such a help to Rusty," Millie said.

One misconception that's been reported in some articles is that Rush Jr. was upset when his eldest son refused to pursue legal careers like his father and grandfather.

"He was upset that he wasn't going to get a college education," Millie said. "But he was never disappointed that Rusty was not going to be a lawyer."

She said David also is proud of his brother's accomplishments.

"They're very close," she said. "They've been good for each other. There's no jealousy on David's part at all."

Millie said the honorary homemaker award from Eagle Forum is a surprise. She said the Limbaugh home during the 1960s was probably typical of any in Cape Girardeau.

"We would go to church on Sunday. I would go to P.T.A. meetings," she said. "I don't think I did anything any other mother didn't do."