FACES & PLACES
LOCAL COLOR MAY 2006
Editor's
Note: This month's Local Color is a tribute
to Moms everywhere . If you would like to add a tribute
to
YOUR mom,
please send it in by May 15
to editor@bullockmarketing.com. An article
on the founder of Mothers' Day follows the tributes.
__________
Mothers' Day Tributes The Afghan
Lady
Ernestine Agatha Yanelli Saggiomo (Esther), just saying my Mom's name brings
a smile to my face and tears to my eyes. When you met her she would ask what
was your favorite color combinations. The next time you seen her she would
have a handmade afghan of those colors waiting to give you. Her generosity,
love and compassion are forever embracing those who were fortunate enough to
cross her path.
Always and Forever, Your Immy
__________
Dear Mom
Thank you for teaching me to fend for myself. Thank you for being strict and
caring enough to not let me do everything I wanted to do. Thank you for keeping
me clean, fed, and safe from harm. Thank you for showing me by example that
women can be as strong as men in all ways. Thank you for showing me how to
treat elders with respect and dignity, even when they are at their worst.
Thank you for giving me silver dollars when I received a good report
card. Thank you for expecting me to always do my best and for still loving
me even if I didn't. Thank you for taking me on vacations and allowing me
to laugh with you until we almost peed our pants.
Thank you for
teaching me how to sew, for letting me use your sewing
machine, and for buying me material for my projects.
Thank you for giving me chores to do so that I could
earn money to buy the books
that I so loved to read. Thank you for keeping me in touch with other family
members so that I grew up knowing the value and joy of having an extended
family. Thank you for teaching me how to ice-skate and ride a bicycle and
how to cook. Thank you for making my Christmas holidays joyful and memorable.
Thank you for
coming to New Hope seven years ago when you had the
opportunity to dance and laugh and show off the lively
woman I knew as a child. Thank you for
your kind and loving heart and how generous you can
be. Thank you for the friends and family you keep dear
and for exhibiting the joy that can come from loving
and sharing with others.
You
are an incredibly beautiful, intelligent, and wonderful woman! Thank you
for helping me to be one too!
I love you, MOM!
~Mar
__________
I've been thinking
about this lately, about the gifts of childhood we
take so much for granted that we never bother to thank
our parents for them. This is one.
My Mom, amongst the many things she did with her life,
was once a high school drama coach. Every spring, she
picked out a cast and produced a play by Shakespeare
with them.
Months before, she'd
start thinking, remembering who'd graduated and who
was coming up, playing with casting,
eventually picking her play. And then the recordings
came out. She had a shelf of them – from the
Old Vic, maybe? – a whole shelf of records of
Shakespeare. One case would come off the shelf, one
stack go on the spindle (if that was unintelligible,
substitute images of multi-cd changers), and the voices
would start.
She'd listen, just listen, a few times first, a few
nights over a few weeks. Then out came the
book: always a Penguin edition, one of the ones with
the cream and grey-green cover. The voices would start
again, the pencil would twitch in her fingers, and
a few lines were cut, followed by a few more. Always
in pencil, so she could go back and check later, to
be sure nothing critical was gone.
After the cuts, the weeks
of stop-and-go began (what she might have given for
a pause button…) as
she closed her eyes and listened, then opened them
and madly scribbled blocking. Then, book splayed, spine
broken, margins filled, the last tech cues were crammed
in, in red this time, I think.
Over in the far dark corner,
under the long cool windows, I'm lying flat on the
floor. My eyes are closed, and
there are voices in the darkness. From the time I was
an infant, I heard Shakespeare. Beautiful, trained
stage voices, and the most enchanted language in the
world.
They'd stop too soon,
of course, when Mom abandoned the record player for
the actual cast, damn them. But,
you see, there are never enough baby sitters in the
world, and the plays were performed on the terrace
of the school which was also, as it happens, my grandmother’s
terrace, so I can't even remember the first performance
I saw. I do remember, though, how it felt. I was sitting
in my grandmother’s yard, a place I played all
the time, a place I knew well. I knew the students
around me. I was sitting by my father. It was comfortably
familiar, a spring evening, iris and peonies blooming
along the edges of the audience.
And then, suddenly, all
different, the step sideways into Faerie. The hush,
the dark, the moment the familiar
became rich and lush and magic. I suppose those were
not the best performances, or the best productions,
I've ever seen, but they’re among my favorite
evenings in the theatre, the spring nights I was initiated
into The Audience.
Thanks, Mom, for the voices in the dark.
__________
Sometimes we motherless daughters
and sons are forgotten on these commemorative days.
Yet when we are together
the communion is deep. On this mother's month I would
like us to remember those who took on that role for
themselves and did a darn good job of it.
Dr. Mae Sakharov
Among the Motherless
__________
 The
Founder of Mother's Day
Used with permission from Connie Burkett and the Taylor
County GenWeb website: http://www.rootsweb.com/~wvtaylor/index.htm
Anna Jarvis, the
founder of Mothers Day, was born in Webster,
Taylor
County, West Virginia, on May 1, 1864, the ninth
of eleven children born to Ann Marie and Granville
Jarvis.
The family moved to Grafton, four miles south of
Webster, when Anna was a year and a half old. It was
here that
the future founder of Mothers Day spent her childhood,
receiving her early education in public schools.
In 1881, she enrolled at the Augusta Female Academy
in
Staunton, Virginia, now Mary Baldwin College. Upon
finishing, Miss Jarvis returned to Grafton where
she taught school for seven years.
From childhood,
Anna Jarvis often heard her mother say that she hoped
that
someone would one day establish
a memorial for all mothers, living and dead. One incident
in particular was a driving force in keeping this wish
alive. The incident occurred during a class prayer
given by Mrs. Jarvis in the presence of her daughter,
Anna, then age twelve, at the conclusion of Mrs. Jarvis'
lesson on "Mothers of the Bible." She closed
the lesson with the prayer "I hope that someone,
sometime will found a memorial mothers day commemorating
her for the matchless service she renders to humanity
in every field of life. She is entitled to it." Anna
never forgot that prayer, and at her mother's graveside
service, Anna's brother Claude heard her recall that
prayer and say "...by the grace of God, you shall
have that Mothers Day." After the death of her father in 1902, Anna Jarvis
along with her mother and sister Lillie, had moved
to Philadelphia to reside with her brother Claude.
After her mother's death on May 9, 1905, Miss Jarvis
began an intense campaign of fulfill the wish of her
mother.
On the first anniversary of her mother's death, May
9, 1906, Miss Jarvis, with some friends, reviewed the
outstanding accomplishments of her mother brought about
through her Mothers Day Work Clubs that were established
prior to the Civil War. After this, Miss Jarvis wrote
to Mr. Norman F. Kendall of Grafton asking him to organize
a Mothers Day Memorial Committee from her mother's
coworkers at the Andrews Church and asked them to pass
a resolution favoring the founding of Mothers Day.
Mr. Kendall carried out this request, and the resolution
was passed. On the second anniversary of Mrs. Jarvis'
death, May 12, 1907, a memorial service was held for
her at the Andrews church.
Miss Jarvis employed every means available to her
to achieve her goal of establishing the observance
of Mothers Day nationally. She wrote hundreds of letters
to legislators, executives, and businessmen on both
state and national levels. She was a fluent speaker
and passed up no opportunity to promote her project.
Most of her appeals fell on deaf ears. Her first real
break came from her appeal to the great merchant and
philanthropist, John Wanamaker of Philadelphia. With
his influence and support, the movement gained momentum.
On May 10, 1908, the third anniversary of Mrs. Jarvis'
death, fully-prepared programs were held at the Andrews
Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton and in Philadelphia,
launching the observance of a general memorial day
for all mothers.
The Grafton service was planned and prepared by Miss
Jarvis She sent a telegram, read by Mr. L. L. Loar,
which defined the purpose of the day:
...To revive the dormant filial love and gratitude
we owe to those who gave us birth. To be a home tie
for the absent. To obliterate family estrangement.
To create a bond of brotherhood through the wearing
of a floral badge. To make us better children by getting
us closer to the hearts of our good mothers. To brighten
the lives of good mothers. To have them know we appreciate
them, though we do not show it as often as we ought...
Mothers Day is to remind us of our duty before it is
too late.
This day is intended that we may make new resolutions
for a more active thought to our dear mothers. By words,
gifts, acts of affection, and in every way possible,
give her pleasure, and make her heart glad every day,
and constantly keep in memory Mothers Day; when you
made this resolution, lest you forget and neglect your
dear mother, if absent from home write her often, tell
her of a few of her noble good qualities and how you
love her.
"A mother's love
is new every day."
God bless our faithful good mothers.
The Honorable Ira E. Robinson, a member of the congregation,
offered a resolution asking that the Andrews Church
set aside the second Sunday of May each year as Mothers
Day. The resolution was immediately adopted and from
then on the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church became
the Mother Church of Mothers Day.
Mr. John Wanamaker presided over the Mothers Day service
held in the Wanamaker Store Auditorium in Philadelphia
in the afternoon of May 10, 1908. The auditorium had
a capacity of 5,000, but over 15,000 sought entrance.
Miss Jarvis spoke eloquently for an hour and ten minutes.
It was truly a great occasion for her and her friends.
An official Mothers Day Committee was selected and
sanctioned by Miss Jarvis. The members were: Mr. John
Wanamaker, Mr. H. J. Heinz, Claude S. Jarvis, Anna
Jarvis, and Norman F. Kendall, authorized Mothers Day
historian. The committee mapped out future plans for
extending the Mothers Day institution on an international
scale.
The adoption of Mothers
Day spread more rapidly than even Miss Jarvis expected.
In 1909, forty-five states,
Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Canada and Mexico observed the
day by appropriate services and the wearing of white
and red carnations. She remarked "where it will
end must be left for the future to tell. That it will
girdle the globe seems now certain."
The first Mothers Day
proclamation was issued by Governor William E. Glasscock
of West Virginia on April 26,
1910. In May 1914 Representative Heflin of Alabama
and Senator Sheppard of Texas introduced a joint resolution,
at the request of Miss Jarvis, naming the second Sunday
in May as Mothers Day, and the resolution was passed
in both Houses. President Woodrow Wilson approved it,
and William Jennings Bryan, Secretary of State, proclaimed
it. In the President's proclamation which followed,
he ordered that the flag be displayed on all government
buildings in the U.S. and foreign possessions. Later
Mr. Heflin, co-author of the resolution said: "The
flag was never used in a more beautiful and sacred
cause than when flying above that tender, gentle army,
the mothers of America."
Miss Jarvis spent many years and much of her fortune
promoting the Mothers Day movement, however in her
later years, she was confronted with a problem that
required as much or more time and effort as the establishment
of Mothers Day. This was her attempt to thwart commercialization
of the day, or otherwise exploiting it for extraneous
purposes. She did not succeed in preventing such an
outcome.
Miss Jarvis spent her later years caring for her invalid
sister, Lillie, and attending flowers on her mother's
grave. After her sister's death in 1944, Miss Jarvis
was very much alone and because of her declining health,
her many friends placed her in the Marshall Square
Sanitarium in West Chester, Pennsylvania. It was here
that Anna Jarvis died on November 24, 1948 at the age
of 84. She is interred beside her mother in West Laurel
Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. On the day of her burial,
she was remembered in Grafton when the bell on the
Andrews Church was tolled eighty-four times in her
honor.
______________
Sources:
Norman F. Kendall, Mothers Day, A History of its
Founding and its Founder, 1937
Howard H. Wolfe, Mothers Day and the Mothers Day
Church, 1962
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