Happy Mother's Day!

   Mother's Day observances were held for the first time without the active blessing of the day's founder on May 8, 1949.

   Miss Anna M. Jarvis of Philadelphia, who almost singlehandedly created the nation's most sentimental holiday, died in November 1948 in a Pennsylvania sanatorium.

    Anna grew up in Grafton, W. Va., where her mother taught Sunday school in St. Andrew's Methodist church. Each year Mrs. Jarvis conducted a celebration honoring the mothers of her students.

    After her mother died in 1905, Anna spent the rest of her life in a great crusade to establish the second Sunday in May as a memorial to mothers.

    In May 1907, she arranged the country's first Mother's Day service at St. Andrew's, dedicated to her mother and all the mothers of Taylor County.

   The next year the first citywide Mother's Day was proclaimed in Philadelphia. In 1912 West Virginia made it a statewide holiday, followed by Pennsylvania the next year.

   With single-minded tenacity, Anna made innumerable speeches before men's and women's clubs. She carried on extensive correspondence with governors, statesmen, clergymen and editors.

    Public response was enthusiastic. By 1914, Anna's persuasive pen had won over President Wilson.

   He signed a joint congressional resolution lauding the American mother as "the greatest source of  the country's strength and inspiration."

   It established Mother's Day permanently and authorized federal display of the flag "as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country."

   Because the carnation was her mother's favorite, Miss Jarvis suggested it as the official Mother's day flower.

    Gradually the custom developed of wearing red carnations to honor living mothers, and white boutonnieres for deceased mothers.

   In succeeding years, Miss Jarvis spent every penny of the moderate fortune left by her mother in establishing the holiday as a deep-rooted American tradition. During those years, too, she cared for her younger sister, Elsie, blind since birth.

 (Original story published in The Gazette, May 3, 1949)