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Resources & Links > Archived Articles > Family and Life > Celebrate Mom Family and Life 
Celebrate MomAbout Mother's Day This is where we Celebrate Mom all year round. It consists of four pages:
About Mother's Dayby Rich Rodriguez 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 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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