Published May 1999 — Download PDF of the original newspaper column
Byrd's-Eye View By U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd Celebrating the Strength of Mothers
I recently participated in a celebration in the small community of Webster in Taylor County, the birthplace of Anna Jarvis, the woman who founded Mother's Day. My wife, Erma, and I were invited to attend the Mother's Day festivities by a community group called "Thunder on the Tygart," which had named Erma its 1999 Mother of the Year. The organization is devoted to the preservation of the Anna Jarvis birthplace and home, a site that is especially important to West Virginians. At the home, visitors learn of the strength, determination, and devotion that Anna's mother, Ann, displayed throughout her life, qualities that she would need when faced with tragedies that would overwhelm most people. In the first six years of her marriage to Granville Jarvis from 1850 to 1856, Ann lost four of her six children to childhood diseases so successfully treated today that we seldom hear of them. Rather than giving in to despair, she recognized the now widely understood link between sanitation and disease and took action. She organized Mother's Work Groups to improve the health of children throughout her community. When the Civil War tore at the community, Ann Jarvis used her Mother's Work Groups as a force for good, keeping relations between warring neighbors from spilling into violence. This woman sought to reconcile her embattled neighbors by organizing a successful community picnic that she called Mother's Friendship Day. She made a special point of inviting veterans from both armies with their families. For all of these acts, she deserves the accolade of hero. There are mothers like Ann Jarvis across the nation. They know what their children are doing, and what their children's friends are doing. These mothers understand and respect their role as supervisors. If they see signs of trouble in their own children, or in their children's friends, they will act. They will talk to the parents of their children's friends, to seek help in identifying the cause of the problem and warning other parents of the danger signals. This is not being nosey or intrusive. It is being a good parent. Let us honor the spirit of Ann Jarvis that lives on in all good mothers. I hope we can find ways to foster the caring, compassion, observation, and energy that infused the Mother's Work Groups of old in more of today's mothers -- and fathers, too -- for a parent's work never ends while a child still lives that needs protection and nurturing. May 4, 1999