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Family and Life
Celebrate Mom
This is where we Celebrate Mom all
year round. It consists of five pages:
by Rich Rodriguez
from Special Features, May 2008 |
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The first Mother's Day was held in a small church in
Grafton, West Virginia more than a century ago. The following
information was gleaned from the website of The
International Mother's Day Shrine Foundation,
headquartered in Grafton.
The birth of Mother's Day was ironically the result of a
death. Ann Jarvis, who worked to provide better nursing care and
sanitation for wounded soldiers in the American Civil War, passed away
in Philadelphia on May 9, 1905. Two years later, her daughter Anna
invited several of her friends to the family home to commemorate her
mother's life. It was at this commemoration that she shared her idea of
having a day of national celebration in honor of mothers... a Mother's
Day.
In the spring of 1908, Anna wrote to the superintendent
of Andrews Methodist Church's Sunday School in Grafton, where her
mother taught classes for twenty years, suggesting that the church
celebrate a Mother's Day in her honor. The superintendent liked the
idea, and on May 10, 1908, the first official Mother's Day service was
held in the church. Anna established the white carnation as the symbol
of the celebration.
The concept of Mother's Day caught on quickly. On April
26, 1910 West Virginia governor William E. Glasscock issued the first
Mother's Day proclamation. In 1912, at the General Methodist Conference
in Minneapolis, Anna was recognized as the founder of Mother's Day.
Then a joint congressional resolution designating the second Sunday in
May as Mother's Day was signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914.
Unfortunately, like many festive dates on the calendar,
Mother's Day later became commercialized, so much to the point that
Anna Jarvis no longer associated herself with the holiday she created,
and lamented its lost meaning. All one has to do is go to today's
department stores, florists and candy shops to see what grieved her.
Mother's Day is said to be the number one holiday for restaurant dates,
flower deliveries and phone calls. But it's too easy to make like
Charlie Brown and scream how Mother's Day is so commercialized; rather,
I choose to focus on the real meaning of Mother's Day: to celebrate
mom, hence the name of this section.
In 2006 I drove to Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Rowland
Heights to visit my maternal grandmother's gravesite. As I entered, my
heart was warmed to see it was crowded with cars and families, all
there to remember their moms and grandmas with colorful bouquets,
balloons and pinwheels. That was the first time I had joy instead of
grief visiting that cemetery, where so many of my relatives are laid to
rest.
I am fortunate to have my mom still with me. All of us
at Immanuel First are fortunate to have "Grandma Kay" Okubo, who is
practically everybody's grandma with her warm personality, wit and
baked goodies. I am grateful for Beverly Claxton, who became my
"adopted grandma" after my own grandma died in 2004. And whether it's
Debbie Okubo, Anastasia Cooch, Sharon Needham, Roberta Scott or all the
other moms in our congregation, we are blessed to have them in our
lives, as our own moms or as mother figures.
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