Dorothy Mengering — David Letterman’s mother, comic foil
Dorothy Mengering, known to late-night television audiences as a gentle foil to her sometimes cutting son, David Letterman, died Tuesday at her home in Carmel, Ind. She was 95.
Tom Keaney, Letterman’s spokesman, confirmed her death.
A white-haired avatar of small-town values placed on the national stage, she seemed equally comfortable on camera baking a pie or interviewing a celebrity.
Ms. Mengering first appeared on Letterman’s NBC show “Late Night” in the mid-1980s and became a regular in the early 1990s, first in telephone calls with her son and, after Letterman moved to CBS in 1993 as host of “Late Show,” as a correspondent, reporting from her Indiana home and from three Winter Olympics.
At the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, Ms. Mengering conveyed an ingenuousness rarely seen in a television interlocutor, although her segments were interspersed with occasional laugh lines that made it clear she was in on the joke. When she was presented with a bill after crosscountry skiing, she said, “Charge it to David Letterman.”
Ms. Mengering awkwardly interviewed Nancy Kerrigan the day after she won the silver medal for figure skating, twice offering her cocoa; she had earlier tried to interview Tonya Harding, who had famously been involved in an attack on Kerrigan. Ms. Mengering called three times to Harding, who ignored her, arms crossed and stone-faced.
At the same Olympics, Ms. Mengering interviewed Hillary Clinton, the first lady at the time. Clinton laughed out loud when Ms. Mengering asked, “Is there anything you or your husband can do about the speed limit in Connecticut?” (Letterman lived in Connecticut and had received several speeding tickets.)
She also kept her composure delivering more incongruous material, like, on her birthday, “The Top 10 Things I Have Learned in My 84 Years.” Highlights included “You can kill a man with two fingers applied swiftly to the Adam’s apple,” “In a pinch, vanilla extract will give you a good buzz” and, at No. 1, “It’s hard having a son who looks older than you.”
Dorothy Marie Hofert was born in Linton, Ind., on July 18, 1921, to Earl Hofert and the former Lena Strietelmeier. She graduated from Linton-Stockton High School and studied business at Indiana University.
In 1942, she married H. Joe Letterman. They moved to Indianapolis, where he began his career as a florist and later opened his own shop. She raised their three children, worked at the flower shop part time and later became a secretary at a Presbyterian church.
Ms. Mengering often cooked on Letterman’s show; she appeared live from her kitchen every Thanksgiving and had him guess what kind of pies she had baked. In 1996, she published a cookbook, “Home Cookin’ With Dave’s Mom.”
Joe Letterman died in 1973. A decade later, she married Hans Mengering, who died in 2013.
In addition to her son, she is survived by two daughters, Janice Letterman Millholland and Gretchen Letterman; a sister, Hazel Baughman; and five grandchildren.