Mary, mother of Gen Xers

Before moms became hot, there were a lot of hot moms on TV. You had Joanna Kerns on Growing Pains, Meredith Baxter on Family Ties, Judith Light on Who's the Boss, Diedre Hall on Our House, Jane Seymour on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and Phylicia Rashad on The Cosby Show, just to name a few.
But if you needed a mom who looked like a real mom, not an actress playing a mom, you had Mary Ellen Trainor. And she was beautiful, funny, caring, authoritative and considerate. Everything a mom should be.
She passed away on May 20 from pancreatic cancer and we're just hearing about it this week. And Trainor hadn't worked in almost a decade, so as younger generations may have forgotten her, those who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s didn't,
She was the mom to The Goonies. One minute she was pleasantly telling a housekeeper that she would like her house looking nice when it is bulldozed down to make way for a golf course. The next, she was getting onto her son for saying a curse word and her sons' friends for making a mess in the living room. Yes, she might have seemed a little oblivious to see that her son has been crudely tied up or being overprotective concerning her other son's asthma, but a lot of Goonies fans probably thought, she's just like my mother.
Trainor had a resume many would love. Along with The Goonies, she costarred in all four Lethal Weapon movies, Die Hard, Romancing the Stone, Forrest Gump, Ghostbusters II, Scrooged, Back to the Future Part II and the cult movie The Monster Squad. She also appeared in the first televised episode of Tales from the Crypt in "All Through the House," which was a remake of the vignette from the 1972 movie, filling in for the Joan Collins role as the murderous housewife, who is terrorized by a sadistic killer in a Santa Claus suit. Incidentally, footage from this episode was showing in Lethal Weapon 2 as both an Easter egg and plug for the show.
Trainor may have gotten some of her acting gigs from her then-husband Robert Zemeckis or from producer friend, Kathleen Kennedy, but she was able to play the roles regardless of screen time. Like the old saying, "There are no small parts, just small actors," Trainor was a good example of that. And she seemed to be okay with being a character actress.
Sadly, her retirement and death leaves some emptiness. Everyone wants to be the star of the movie or the scene stealer, but sometimes, we need an actor like Trainor who knows that someone has to play a certain part, even if it's only for one scene.
And for many fans of her movies and shows, it's like when a teacher or the mother of our friends passes away.
And we know there'll be no one else like her.
Rest in peace.