Since the beginning – and surely until the end – of time, our mothers often serve as our greatest teachers. Mother’s Day was created in memory of just such a mother when Anna Jarvis began promoting a holiday in honor of her mother, Ann Jarvis. This Sunday, May 10th, children, young and old, will gather to celebrate their mothers as America celebrates Mother’s Day.

As I’m sure you know, Mother’s Day was started in Grafton, West Virginia. What you may not know is that Anna Jarvis, and her community, thought so highly of her mother that they celebrated her each May from 1902 until 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson, working with the Congress, officially designated the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day across the country.

Anna Jarvis grew up during a time of great conflict in the United States. She watched her mother tend to the sick during the Civil War and fight for better sanitation in Grafton. She was a tireless advocate for senior citizens, appreciating that they had given so much to raise the men and women who sometimes neglected them in their old age. After the Civil War, she continued her work to help heal the wounds of the war years and bring families and communities together again. 

Ann Jarvis taught at the local Sunday school at Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton for twenty years until she moved with her family to Philadelphia where she lived until her death in 1905. And she brought home her ideas of education, seeing that her young daughter was educated in the public schools of Grafton and then at Mary Baldwin College in Virginia. In an era when many women were limited to roles only within the home, Ann Jarvis was a pioneer for community activism and education. 

She certainly sounds like a woman worthy of every honor we could bestow, doesn’t she? That is certainly what her daughter thought and, thanks to her work, we are given the opportunity each year to stand up and thank the women who raised us.

How do you honor your mother each year? She is so much more than the woman who bakes hundreds of cookies for the school bake sale or who cheers at the sidelines of your Little League game. Today, Mother’s Day has grown far beyond the dreams of the West Virginian who started it.  It has become one of our biggest most commercially successful holidays — quite a contrast to the simple ceremony held in a small church more than a century ago.

For example, according to IBISWorld, a publisher of business research, Americans will spend approximately $2.6 billion on flowers, $1.53 billion on pampering gifts—like spa treatments—and another $68 million on greeting cards this year. Mother’s Day also generated about 7.8% of the U.S. jewelry industry’s annual revenue in 2008, with custom gifts like mother’s rings. We can’t measure the worth of the women who raised us in dollars and cents but, with the current economic state, those numbers certainly say something, don’t they?

This Mother’s Day, as we remember our mothers, let us be thankful for the examples they have set, the love they have shown, and the legacies they have left behind.

Mother’s Day is a time for families across the Nation to come together to honor those who gave us life and who, throughout our lives, have given us encouragement, inspiration, and unconditional love.  It is a heart-felt and loving tradition, one of which West Virginians can be especially proud.  

To those whose mothers have left this world, I hope you take a moment during this special weekend to cherish the memories, for, as the saying reminds us, life may be short for some but the memories will last forever. 

It takes a lot of patience, perseverance and love to raise a child. Luckily for all of us, as Anna Jarvis, that determined and loyal daughter once said, “A mother’s love is new every day.”

For this, we are forever indebted. May God bless all of our mothers and their families today and always. 

U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV) represents West Virginia’s 3rd District.

For more information contact: Rachael Berkey (202) 225-3452