Wonder Woman of the Week: Anna Jarvis

This week's Wonder Woman is the reason we all celebrate our Wonder Woman mothers each May. Anna Jarvis was the first person to conceive of the idea of celebrating moms across the country once per year and for that, she's earned her spot on our list of heroic women. Jarvis was born in West Virginia in 1864 as the ninth of eleven children to a mother who lost seven of her children in infancy or early childhood. As a young adult, Jarvis grew up as a social activist within the Methodist Church especially in recognizing the achievements and contributions of women in society. As a church fundraiser, Jarvis devised the idea of Mother's Day as a way to sell flowers to raise money for her church's women's club.

Anna Jarvis later moved to Tennessee to work as a bank teller then to Pennsylvania to work at an insurance company where she was the first woman in the agency to act as a literary and advertising editor. Jarvis always kept close correspondence with her mother in West Virginia, and after the death of Jarvis' father, Anna urged her mentally ill mother to move to Pennsylvania so she could take care of her. After a year of care, Jarvis' mother died in 1905. The death sparked Jarvis' renewed interest in the concept of Mother's Day when she held a memorial service for mothers at her local Methodist church following her own mother's death in what would become the first official Mother's Day.

Florists and greeting card makers instantly fell in love with the concept of the holiday and President Woodrow Wilson made Mother's Day a recognized holiday during the 1910's. Anna Jarvis' memorial to moms became an international holiday during which children would buy red carnations for living mothers and white carnations for deceased mothers. Jarvis wasn't happy with her holiday becoming a major capitalist exploit, but she would have certainly been happy to see all the children of the world today celebrating their wonderful moms.