Published: May 01, 2008 06:59 pm            

Honoring the best mother in the world ... yours

Mother’s Day marks 100th anniversary

GRAFTON — This year is dedicated to the best mother in the world.

Yours.

Anna Jarvis felt this way about her mother, Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis, and dedicated herself to establishing a day to honor all mothers.

That day — Mother’s Day — is marking its 100th anniversary this year.

The first official Mother’s Day observance was held May 10, 1908, at the then-Andrews Episcopal Methodist Church, now the International Mother’s Day Shrine, at 11 E. Main St., Grafton.

Gov. Joe Manchin will be the speaker at the annual service at 9 a.m. Sunday, May 11, at the shrine.

If Anna Jarvis is the mother of Mother’s Day, then Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis is the mother who inspired her.

The elder Jarvis was “a remarkable woman,” said Cindi Mason, IMDS program coordinator.

Born in 1832 in Virginia, Jarvis had moved to Barbour County when her father, a Methodist minister, was transferred to Philippi. In 1850, she married Granville Jarvis and settled in Taylor County. They had 12 children (“possibly 13,” Mason said), only four of whom survived to adulthood.

During the Victorian era of the 1850s and ’60s, when women were more or less confined to the home, “Ann Jarvis was well-respected in the community,” Mason said.

She taught Sunday school at Andrews for 25 years.

“This was her home church. That’s where the connection between this building and Mother’s Day comes in,” Mason said.

By the late 1850s, she had already lost several children.

“But she did not keep her grief inside herself,” Mason said.

She organized a series of Mother’s Day Work Clubs in the area to improve health and sanitary conditions. Among other services, the clubs raised money for medicine, hired women to work for families in which the mothers suffered from tuberculosis, and inspected bottled milk and food. In 1860, local doctors supported the formation of clubs in other towns.

During the Civil War, these women tended to wounded soldiers on both sides, whether Confederate or Union.

After the end of the war, she organized a Mother’s Friendship Day in which one woman dressed in Southern style and another in Northern dress sang separately and then embraced.

“They encouraged everybody to do the same,” Mason said. “By all accounts, it was really moving. She believed if she brought the women together, they could show by example.

“She wanted women to be empowered to be more in the community than just a decoration. If they did more for their communities, children would become better adults.”

After Granville Jarvis died in 1902, the family moved to Philadelphia. On May 9, 1905, Ann Jarvis passed away.

“Anna, as the legend goes, at the age of 12 overheard her mother say that someone one day should establish a day to honor the unsung hero of the family ... the mother,” Mason said.

“Supposedly, Anna always took that to heart and at the time of her mother’s funeral, said she would take on the task of establishing a day of honoring women and mothers.”

In 1907, on the second anniversary of her mother’s death, she announced her goal to a group of friends.

“She contacted the superintendent of Andrews Church about a service honoring mothers.

“In 1906 and 1907, memorial services were held here the second Sunday of May by the Sunday School classes in honor of Mrs. Jarvis, but they were not Mother’s Day services,” Mason said.

The first Mother’s Day service was held at Andrews Church on May 10, 1908. Services have been held each year at the church since.

“Simultaneously, services were held also in Philadelphia, but we were the first to have a Mother’s Day service.”

West Virginia Gov. William E. Glasscock issued the first Mother's Day proclamation on April 26, 1910. In 1912, at the General Methodist Conference in Minneapolis, Minn., Anna Jarvis was recognized as the founder of Mother’s Day.

A joint resolution in the United States Congress designated the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. The official resolution was approved by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914.

The carnation, Ann Jarvis’ favorite flower, is the emblem of Mother’s Day.

“The carnation doesn’t drop its petals but holds them close to its heart, much like a mother does,” Mason said. “Anna Jarvis felt the white carnation symbolized the purity of a mother’s love.”

But the tradition of wearing a white carnation if one’s mother is deceased or a red or pink one if she is living was, according to Anna Jarvis, the creation of “a clever florist.”

“She never intended the emblem of Mother’s Day to be a badge of mourning, but to be a symbol of a mother’s love,” Mason said.

The Gothic revival-style facility was built in 1873 as the Andrews Episcopal Methodist Church. When the congregation left in 1966 for a new building, it officially became the International Mother’s Day Shrine and has been on the Register of Historical Landmarks since 1976.

It has changed little since 1873. A wing was added in the 1930s. The former pastor’s study is now an office and gift shop. Ann Jarvis’ former Sunday School room is now a small museum.

Although no longer a religious facility, the shrine conducts Mother’s Day services each year and is available for weddings and other events, Mason said.

But the quiet beauty of the church will last until it’s no longer standing.

The small church is adorned with 24 stained glass windows, two containing images of the two Jarvis women. The sanctuary is enhanced with murals painted by local artist George Blaney from 1911 to 1932.

When the congregation left in 1966, they took the pipe organ but left the facade. In 2004 the shrine’s board of trustees raised $50,000 to restore the organ.

The massive bell in the tower is rung at weddings.

“This is just incredible, beautiful,” Mason said of the former church. “This is a one-of-a-kind place. You could never replace it.

“But outside of Grafton’s boundaries, few people really know what it is,” she said. She found that out in 1907 when she attended History Day at the state Capitol.

“A lot of our legislators had no idea that Mother’s Day had started in Grafton. Fifty percent of that is their fault for not knowing their West Virginia history.

“And the other 50 percent is our fault for not getting the word out there. Our goal is to preserve, promote and develop through education the spirit of motherhood.”

With ads in Good Housekeeping magazine and stories carried on national networks and in regional newspapers, the word is getting out, she said.

“There were people before Anna Jarvis who conceived the idea of a Mother’s Day, but they didn’t take that extra step of getting a proclamation or resolution. Anna was the one with enough fortitude to see it through.”

She had no children of her own and never married, Mason said.

“Mother’s Day became her intellectual property, in a sense, her chid. She fought bitterly against the commercialization of Mother’s Day. She wanted to protect it and keep the initial concept that she intended.

“Just as a mother protects her children, Anna took that kind of nurturing and protective maternal instinct” about Mother’s Day.

“She even took on Eleanor Roosevelt. She even took her father to court over bad business dealings. She was quite spunky.”

Anna Jarvis died in 1948 with no family members at her side, Mason said. She was the longest living of her parents’ children.

“Ann Jarvis had another daughter, also named Anna Marie, who died in infancy. So sometimes there’s confusion with Ann, Anna Marie and Anna.

“There’s been a lot of controversy that this is not a functioning church,” Mason said.

Blame the word “shrine,” she said.

“Katie Couric in a story on misuse of federal funding, said that Robert Byrd, ‘the king of pork,’ had just secured $126,000 for some little town in West Virginia for some little shrine for mothers.”

That “little shrine” is the International Mothers Day Shrine, Mason said.

“A lot of people got bent out of shape over this story. But it can work to our advantage. The word ‘shrine’ is misleading. A shrive can be anything. Hopefully this will create enough curiosity that people will Google ‘Mother’s Day’ and see that there is a Mother’s Day Shrine that is a tribute and a memorial to Mother’s Day.

“If somebody was trying to establish a day of this nature today, it probably would not be held in a church. But in 1908, church was where the community gathered together. Anna Jarvis said that Mother’s Day was never established just for women as mothers. It’s for all mothers.

“Some people don’t attend our services because they think it’s a religious service. It isn’t. It’s for all mothers. It’s an eclectic tradition to acknowledge mothers and to reinforce what they give back to their families.

“We all need a mother or mother figure. The role of mother has changed. And we’ve changed with it. Some moms are dads. Some moms are in Iraq. Some mothers never bore children.

“It’s a universal title and in our service we try to acknowledge that.”

E-mail Debra Minor Wilson at dwilson@timeswv.com.

        

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