A Tribute to Linda Ray Croxton Springfield

February 28, 2026

If my mom were sitting in the back of the room today, she’d probably have three things to say. First, she’d tell me to stand up straight. Second, she’d point out a grammatical error in my opening sentence. And third, she’d likely use a choice four-letter word to tell us all to stop crying and pour a glass of wine.

Linda Ray Croxton Springfield was not a quiet woman. She was a force. Born in Dallas in 1943, she was an only child who eventually became the matriarch of a small army. She was stern, she was fun, and she was—as many of you know—very, very opinionated. Whether you were her son, a stranger at the grocery store, or President Obama, you were going to hear what Linda thought. And she didn't care if you wanted to hear it; she cared that it was right.

She had a very specific way of handling things—always her way—and she was more than happy to explain exactly why her way was the only way. To understand Linda, you have to understand the story of the Corvette.

One summer, the neighbors across the street were having a garage sale. Someone in a brand-new convertible Corvette made mistake number one: they parked across her driveway. Mistake number two occurred when the driver dismissed her after she asked him to move it. Now, Mom happened to be watering her flowers at the time. With the hose in hand, she didn't argue further; she simply began hosing down the dashboard of the Corvette and filling the front seat with water. When the driver developed a sudden sense of urgency and ran toward her shouting, he got hosed down, too. That was Mom. She didn't wait for permission to stand her ground.

That directness was a hallmark of her parenting, too. Unlike most mothers of her era, Linda never once uttered the phrase, "Wait until your father gets home." She didn't need to. If there was a problem, she handled it right then, right there, and usually with a vocabulary that left no room for interpretation.

But beneath that sharp exterior and that legendary, artistic use of profanity, was a woman whose heart was a fortress for the people she loved.

In 1977, when life threw our family a curveball after Dad’s accident, Mom didn't blink. She didn't have time to. She worked two jobs—bank teller by day, dry cleaners by night—to keep our world turning. She was an only child who carried the weight of her own parents' final years with a devotion that was as quiet as it was constant.

To her boys—Scott and his wife Mona in Norman, Oklahoma; Brad in Fort Worth, Texas; and Matt and his wife Vanessa in Newalla, Oklahoma—she was the ultimate paradox: she was our toughest critic and our fiercest defender. She might not have always agreed with the path we chose, but she would fight anyone who tried to stand in our way. She was our biggest cheerleader, even when she was correcting our "who" vs. "whom."

She was just as proud of the next generation, always keeping up with her grandsons Joe and his daughter, her great-granddaughter Logan, in Mustang, Oklahoma; Ethan in Sneads Ferry, North Carolina; and her granddaughters Mary in Seattle, Washington, and Paige and Emily in Denton, Texas.

Visits to see Mom always meant her famous tacos and her chocolate cake. They were hallmarks of our time together. In a classic Linda move, she would often have one, but she’d never take the last one—a small, quiet gesture of the provider she always was.

She loved the advertising world—working on campaigns for Greyhound, Schlotzsky’s, and The Wall Street Journal—but her greatest campaign was us. She was a mother to people she didn't even give birth to, opening her heart and her home to anyone who needed a "Linda-style" reality check or a place to belong.

Every Mother’s Day, Brad would send her Jimmy Dean’s I.O.U. It’s a song about the debt we owe our mothers—the meals, the stitches, the midnight worries. And every year, they’d both cry. It was the one time the stern Linda and the colorful Linda gave way to the Mom who just loved her kids more than life itself.

So, today, we remember the woman who read everything, corrected everyone, and loved us fiercely. We remember the woman who could find the humor in any situation, no matter how dire, and who taught us that a well-placed expletive is sometimes the only honest way to describe the world.

Mom, we’ve got the grammar from here. We’ll try to keep our opinions to ourselves—though we probably won’t.

Mom, we love you the most and the mostest, and we said it first.