Mother's Day Special

In this special Mother’s Day episode of The Last Clue, we pause our usual deep‑dive investigations to honor the mothers we cherish, the mothers we miss, and the mothers whose stories continue to shape us long after they’re gone. Through heartfelt reflections, listener tributes, and powerful moments of remembrance, we celebrate the women who protected us, taught us, and loved us with a strength that never fades. This episode is a gentle space for grief, gratitude, and connection as we recognize the impact of every mother—past, present, and forever in our hearts. 

We invite you to share a shoutout to your mother—whether she’s still with you or remembered in love—in the comments wherever you listen to our podcast. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:33

This special edition of The Last Clue is a production of Smith Media Team LLC. If you have any information about a case or cases that you would like us to look into, please email us at info at SmithMedia TeamLLC.com.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Happy Mother's Day.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

And all of those at that are no longer with us. We just wanted to take some time to spend honoring, celebrating, and remembering all moms and fur moms.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Especially fur moms.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

They are a special breed.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

We're finding out that it's difficult.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Ha ha. Took me a second. The Microsoft 97 processor just got that. It takes a special breed to be a mom. It's not cut out for everybody. I was raised by a very strong, independent mother who's no longer with us. And she had to do whatever it took to make ends meet so that we could get by, so that we didn't go without for anything. We we struggled, sure. There were times that things were lean, but we never went without.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Same. I was one of those that was fortunate enough to grow up in a two-parent household. And there were times my mom worked full-time, worked part-time, and then was a stay-at-home mom. So she did it all and made it look easy. So I would like to give a special shout-out to my mom, Sharon Davis.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

And I would like to give a shout out to my mother again, who's no longer with us, Cynthia Smith.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Happy Heavenly Mother's Day.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

She was one of a kind. That's about all I can say without going into a full podcast episode.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Which we may need to do because there are some very interesting stories there. And your mom was a boy mom.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Yes. I have two brothers, one on each side, so I am the middle child, classic middle child syndrome. This is this is exactly why I do this podcast. I have middle child syndrome, so I need all the focus on me all the time. I need the spotlight. No, I was I was the I was the forgotten one. I mean, and not I don't mean that in a bad way. I've just I was the one that had to you had an older brother and you had a younger brother. Fend for myself. The older one was always old enough to do stuff that I wasn't old enough to do. And my younger brother breastfed fed until he was 23.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

So I I mean I that's most men can only hope.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

I mean so uh you know I just I I had to I had to learn. I mean, I remember one time, like I said, we we we had enough, but we had to take care of our stuff. And I remember that my mother had taught me how to do the laundry. She had showed me, you know, how to use the washer, how to use the dryer, everything. So the first time that I went to use the washer on my own, I did a typical boy thing. So kids may not understand this. The washers used to have a push button on the knob that you turned, so you would pop the button out and turn the knob to the cycle that you wanted to use and then wash your clothes. So in typical boy fashion, I filled the washing machine probably way too full, and I had set it on a small cycle because I remember one of the things that she taught me was to put the laundry detergent in, set it on a small cycle, let the small cycle run for a little bit, suds up the water, you know, get get as much out of the soap as you could, and then stop it, put your stuff in, close it back, start it back up. Well, what I did was I did all of those things, but then as I was walking back through the house, I remembered, oh, it was probably it was probably football pants or baseball pants. I remembered something. Yes, sports ball pants. I remembered something that needed to go in the washer. And so I ran back to my room, ran to the washer. When I flipped the lid up, I hit the button unknowingly. So at this point, the washer is full of water, full of clothes. I threw the pants in, I shut the door, the washing machine does not start moving at all. Okay. And it continues to move. So instead of going back through my steps like she taught me, I frantically started spinning the button to see if I could get it to start up. I lifted the lid, put it back down. What I did originally was I lifted the lid violently enough to hit the button, the the lid of the metal washing machine. It hit the button and pushed the button back in, which inactivated the washing machine. I didn't remember that.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Uh so instead you were trying to do the Nintendo reset.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

So yes. So this washing machine is full of water and full of clothes, and it no run a nada. So I remember on the 40-foot telephone cord calling my brother carrying the phone all the way to the washing machine, telling him I broke the washing machine. I'm I am dead. My ass is grass, and my mom's gonna mow it. I mean, I haven't heard that in a long time. I rem I remember I had to call my older brother, and of course I'm frantic, and I haven't hit puberty yet, so I sound like Mickey Mouse in a fire. And he finally has to come home, and he comes home, and I swear it was the most disgust, it was one of the most disgusted. You gotta remember there were three boys, so he had disgusted looks for me on other things. But I remember he took one look at the washing machine, he lifted the lid, he closed it back down, and he pushed the damn button, and the washing machine started right up. And I'm sure he called me an idiot or a moron, something to that effect, and he rightfully so. He absolutely should have called me like 12 names in a row because he came home and we lived nine miles south of the town that I went to school in. So it wasn't like he just came from around the block to come check this washing machine that my dumbass had not pushed the button on. It was it was a 10-mile drive, basically. So, yes, I I remember those things. I I still I still do laundry, I make sure and check the buttons, but but yes, I was one of the you still do the Nintendo reset. Yeah, I certainly do. I check, I check all the buttons, all the boxes. It's like when I leave the house and I pat myself down, phone keys, wallet. I I I literally police frisk myself to make sure I have everything.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

And then I still do the shoutouts. Do you have your A? Got your B? C.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Because she knows I work off of Microsoft Microsoft 97 processor, so she has to double check my work.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

Well, and it was kind of the opposite for me. So your mom was a boy mom with three boys. Well, my mom, girl mom, three girls, and I was the baby.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

So that sounds terrifying.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

I'm sure it was for my dad.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

That sound that sounds terrifying for a human.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

How far apart were y'all? Oh god.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Now I'm gonna have to math between the math segment was brought to you by the English department.

SPEAKER_02 8:25

Abacus thing. Uh so my oldest sister that I grew up with is six years older than me. Okay, and then my middle sister, four years older. So six years from oldest to youngest. Okay. And it was, you know, my my mom was great. Like I said, she made everything look easy. What whether she was working full-time, working part-time, coming home, taking care of the house, making dinner, all of the things that moms did and still do to this day. So I was just terrorized by my older sisters.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

And, you know, those were things that mom never knew until, you know, later on in life was she was like, Oh, I knew. Or, you know, those when things would come up, and then she would just have that intrinsic, holy, oh life sucking. I had no idea.

unknown 9:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

So just kind of polar opposites as us for children, but basically kind of the the superhuman moms. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

My my mom introduced me uh unwillingly, but introduced me to my favorite side dish. And this will be my favorite side dish until the day that I leave this earth. So we used to have school lunch just like most other schools. And when we would go to school lunch, I had friends that that like this. I I was disgusted by it. They would serve on certain days. We had the plastic trays. A lot of a lot of us, a lot of us of a certain age remember the plastic trays that you got in the cafeteria at lunch. And they would serve this I can only refer to it as liquid rice. It had rice in it, but to see the rice, you kind of had to wade through this white, milky water. And I had some friends that that loved it. They were like, You gotta try this. And I was like, There's no way I'm gonna try that. I don't want to use a straw to eat my rice.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

That does not sound appealing.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

No, it was it was disgusting. I wish I had a photo of that. If any of my classmates have a photo, I don't know why you would, of that rice. I I will feature that on the podcast. It was horrible looking.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

I don't even know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

So my mom would make white rice with cream of mushroom soup. And now we refer to this as Mimi's rice. My my daughter has tried to call it daddy's rice. It's not daddy's rice, it's Mimi's rice. She's the one that made it for me. And it is it it came to be that she would make it and I wouldn't try it because I was traumatized by the rice that I saw in the cafeteria. And it it's you're talking about two totally different things. You could actually see the rice and you could see the squares of mushroom because she used Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. I can only imagine. And she'd put a little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper, some butter. That's I mean, it it's a very basic side dish. But very popular here now. Yeah, and and she would make it, and I wouldn't try it because again, I had this this traumatizing experience, like at least once a week at the school cafeteria of seeing my my friends suck down this oyster type rice. This is I mean, the only thing it didn't have was a shell. So she just begged me one time to try it, and I was like, God, I'll try it. Just yeah, you know, you know how you are when you're uh in preteen teenager. I'll just try it, so she'll shut up. I got another story about that. You know what? I might save that for exclusive. I have a story about my mother that that changed our relationship, and it happened during my teenage years. Oh my. But it involved a word that you should never say to your mother.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Oh, oh.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

And it involved superhuman strength to this day.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

I just got a little stronger thinking about what that word could possibly be because I know what one it is for me.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

I'm telling you, it involves superhuman strength that I have rarely, if ever, seen since that incident. Let's go back to rice before I start. Oh my god. I man, I just had a fly. I just got warm. And I'm I'm drinking I'm drinking coffee from No Shift Coffee Company.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

And there's a Mother's Day shout-out for them. They've got a mama. Yeah. So Mama Coffee. Shout out, Mama Coffee. Mama No Shift Coffee Company.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

That might end up being a WWE wrestler's mama no shift. Oh. But anyway, she begged me to try this rice. The the Minute Rice, cream of mushroom soup, butter, a little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper. She begged me to try it. I was like, okay, I'll I'll try it. I tried it and I loved it. I it became so popular that I would request it with meals that it didn't typically go with. Like she would she would make something that didn't really need a rice side dish, and I would still request Mimi's rice. And it's at times here in the house, I will make it as a meal for myself. Yes. But yeah, that's that is the story of how I almost missed out on my favorite side dish that came from my mother. It took me took me quite a long time to figure out exactly how she made it because my mom was very good at teaching. She wasn't necessarily great at instructing. So I didn't really have like written instructions on exactly how she did everything. So when she was gone, it was kind of a you know Fafo type situation where I was trying to figure out a lot of that going on growing up. I was I was trying to remember what she did during dinner because again, I was the middle child. I would I would help cook when she wanted to go shop. I was the only kid that got drugged to go shop. I have a Star Wars story about that that may be part of clueless too. It's not as interesting as the other one, but maybe part of clueless as well. But I was the one that did everything with my mom because my you know my older brother was too old and cool, and my younger brother, again, had you know breast milk pumped until she he was in his twenties and laying in his bed with all of his cabbage patch dolls.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

That's that's true. My younger brother had a plethora of cabbage patch kids. Like to I don't know if I'd use the word obscene, but in this day and age, if you there's probably a photo out on the internet somewhere of a kid laying in the middle of cabbage patch kids, and it's probably the kid of the person that invented cabbage patch kids, but that was my little brother. He had a disturbing amount, and that's I think that's and I didn't have a one. I I think that's a very, very good description, is he had a disturbing amount of cabbage patch kids. Well, I'm gonna leave it at that.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

Yeah, I I think we we might have a whole episode on you and your childhood, and there might be some true crime in there, especially with um rice and cabbage patch dolls. I personally would also like to give a couple of Mother's Day shout-outs to some of my other favorite mothers. One that was like another mother to me growing up, Carol Daith, who my best friend Cindy lost her mom not too terribly long ago. I spent so much time at Cindy's house, where literally Mama Carol was literally just another mother to me. And she was another mom, worked full-time, two older boys, and then Cindy as the youngest. But her and her husband owned their own pool company in Florida. So you can imagine how busy they were. But sweetest lady, second mother I could ever have asked for, besides the other Naomi Phelan. But Mama Carol was absolutely sweet. But that was she was also one of those women you never wanted to make angry, ever. Yeah. So happy heavenly Mother's Day to Carol Daith. And then another one of my favorite mothers, our daughter, Caitlin. Caitlin. Caitlin. She's a special breed as well. Not only is she our child, but she works full-time, has three young children, and goes to school full-time. Yep. Nursing school at that.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

And is excelling at everything.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Everything. She literally just got the highest award at work that she could possibly have gotten for being the in the top 1% of performers within her company, which is a Fortune 500 company.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

We're super proud of her. She's super proud of it. She's worked her ass off.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

She has worked her ass off, and she's gonna kill me for saying this, but Cheeky Monster, you get them, girl. You get them, baby girl.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

I I've I have a couple others I'd like to make. I'm not gonna go into detail.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Nope, that's what I was gonna say. I'm sure you've got some moms you would like to wish a happy mother's day, happy heavenly mother's day too.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

But so I had a I had a couple of bonus moms because bonus moms, that's good. My mom, my mom worked quite a bit, and when she had her weekends, she enjoyed her weekends, and so you know, she would go out and uh live a little bit of life after working, you know, 50 hours a week, etc. So without going into you know too many stories, I would like to just give a special shout out to Larita Junk Pud. Still very sorry for anything that you know Eric and I did to traumatize you, including the cherry jello with raisins in it that we created one night. Yeah, it was terrible. It's a it was a bad idea. It was my idea. I don't think Eric had anything to do with it. I think it was totally my idea, it was a terrible idea. But thank you, Pud for putting up with me the way you did. You didn't have to, and you did it anyway. And Vicki Jenkins, also another one of my bonus moms. Chris's mom always took me in. We always had a lot of fun at their house. Where where I got gathered my love for popcorn, because we would do like movie nights and stuff, and we would sit and watch movies with Vicky and Rick and all of us kids, and and Vicky or Rick, or maybe both of them, would make microwave popcorn for us, and that's where I learned a few of my little microwave popcorn tricks. Not really tricks, just little little things that I still do. Okay, I don't let the microwave go all the way down to to zero when the popcorn pops. I kind of sit there at the end and just listen like Rick would. And then the way I salt my popcorn is kind of the way Vicky used to do it. I know, I know they won't believe me, but that's uh that's just how I it's one of those things I've had.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

I was wondering why you did it that way. I but I understand now.

unknown 19:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

But we've yeah, we've got some moms that we want to definitely make sure we mention. One of our top fans, Stacy Martin. Stacy. Stacy, happy Mother's Day. She is also a fairly new Gigi with some grandbabies now. So happy Mother's Day to Stacy and one of our favorite fur moms that we got to meet for the second time this weekend over we're just gonna say the business name, awesome possum in Moore Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Was that a poodle or a golden doodle that she had on the table when we went in?

SPEAKER_02 20:13

That was beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

No, and he was sitting so pretty. He didn't care that we came in. He just he kind of he almost kind of vogue.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

He looked like he had a smile.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

He almost vogue, kind of turned his head and looked at us, and then he was like, Okay, there's other people here. Great.

SPEAKER_02 20:27

Yeah. One of the and another mama, and we'll call her a page, page mama, page mother, one of the Facebook pages that we spend a lot of time in. We're gonna say, Happy Mother's Day to Julie Wilson because she is a major babysitter. You know who you are, girl.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Oh my god, I don't know how she does it.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

I don't, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

I don't know if you can scream through Facebook, but it she has every right to do so.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

Absolutely every right. And on another note, a mother that we've we've talked about her son constantly and will continue to do so. Amanda Powell, who lost her son, Joe Powell, a little over a year ago. But something no mother really ever wants to have to do. But we want to say happy Mother's Day to Amanda Powell.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Absolutely. That's something that's something that no mother should ever go through. And and I know that it's a day-to-day struggle, and sometimes it's minute by minute, but it's it's admirable the way that you've handled yourself given the circumstances you've been handed.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Absolutely. And also, happy Heavenly Mother's Day to keep the memory of Janice Ashcraft Lily alive. Her daughter Denise is constantly advocating for her mom to give her story justice, keep it going until there are answers.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

And that story's not over yet.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

It is definitely not over yet, and one that I don't Think we'll ever be over for you.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Oh, that's gotta be Karen Silkwood.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

That that that is uh that's a story that my mom and I shared. She was the first person to ever show me the movie Silkwood. It's a story that she was very passionate about and now I am very passionate about. I do feel like that that story is gonna have an ending within my lifetime. If you have anything to say about it, absolutely. But yeah, absolutely. The family of Karen Silkwood, we are still advocating for you, and we're still doing what we can behind the scenes. I know a lot of people don't see it, and a lot of people don't see a lot of the stories that we work on.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Uh no, we're kind of private about what we do behind the scenes, other than some of the goofy stuff that we show on video.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

Yeah, when we when we take on a story, we get very quiet, and that's by design. Yes. It's one of those things just because you don't see us working doesn't mean we aren't working.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

That's very true. That's we're always working.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

That that also applies to Karen Silkwood.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Absolutely. But we wanted to make sure that we we wanted to do a special Mother's Day episode because everything we do is typically so heavy and deep. We wanted to keep it a little bit more lighthearted, even though we are doing some remembrances here on Mother's Day. And I'm sure there are so many more mothers that we know we aren't gonna be able to mention by name, but every single follower, everyone that comments that interacts, that likes the unforgotten great Facebook page, does a lot of interacting. That's another mama page that we're gonna say happy Mother's Day to. But we don't want to forget anybody, so we have to say happy Mother's Day. Shout out to all the comments.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Put your mom in the comments, give her a shout out on our Facebook page, wherever you listen, YouTube, just shout your mom out.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

Yeah, say say or by name. And happy Mother's Day to all of the cities, countries, everywhere that we have all of our listeners from, across the pond, England, Europe, Asia, South America, everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Australia, post a picture, just make sure it's not upside down.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

But we did want to make sure that we came on and gave Happy Mother's Day message to every single one that listens. Everyone, thank you, and happy Mother's Day.