"SHOW YOUR MOM YOU LOVE HER BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE," URGED ANNA JARVIS
[Above: The Mother With Children statue by William Douglas Hopen, outside the International Mother’s Day Shrine, at the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia—Carol M. Highsmith / public domain, Library of Congress loc.pnp/highsm.31593]
IN 1914 President Woodrow Wilson, acting on a joint resolution of the United States Congress, directed “government officials to display the United States flag on all government buildings” and invited
the people of the United States to display the flag at their homes or other suitable places on the second Sunday in May as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.
After the holiday became famous and was adopted by many nations world-wide, various people claimed the idea. Some had proposed a day for mothers; others had actually implemented local observances. However, the person whose tireless advocacy, fundraising, and letter writing resulted in Wilson’s national proclamation was Anna M. Jarvis.
Anna’s mother, Ann Reese Jarvis, died in 1905. For years she had organized women’s groups as well as teaching Sunday school at St. Andrew’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia. Grafton’s Sunday school superintendent asked Anna to help him honor her mother’s memory. The Grafton service was held on the second Sunday of May, 1907, the anniversary of Ann Jarvis’s death. Although Anna could not attend, she sent a telegram that was read at the service.
It seemed to Anna that children often failed to show their appreciation for their moms while the mothers were still alive. Why not change that? Why not create a day of reflection and quiet prayer, a day for thanking God for mothers and all that they do for us? Anna persuaded her own church in Philadelphia to hold a Mother’s Day service on this day, 10 May 1908. She supplied the church with white carnations, her mom’s favorite flower.
After that, Anna wrote thousands of letters and gave countless interviews to promote a national Mother’s Day. She trademarked the name “Mother’s Day” (with an apostrophe before the s to show that each individual mom was meant). Friends joined her effort. An evangelist, J. Wilbur Chapman, even used his revival meetings to promote the cause.
Six years later, Anna had her wish. Soon, however, the holiday was commercialized. Anna hated this. She sued people for using “Mother’s Day” in their advertising. Once she was arrested for protesting a women’s group that sold white carnations! She even tried to get the government to ban the holiday she had worked so hard to create. She went to her death embittered at what Mother’s Day had become. Today, Mother’s Day is the day of the year that has the highest volume of phone calls and generates millions in the sale of cards and gifts.
Ironically Anna herself never became a mother. She had been tied up caring for her blind sister, Elsinore. St. Andrew’s Methodist Episcopal Church became incorporated as a Mother’s Day shrine in 1962.
—Dan Graves
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