Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

Each year, on the second Sunday of May, we celebrate mothers, often with flowers, sometimes candy,

whatever it takes to show our moms that we care. And no one would hate that more than the woman who invented Mother's Day.

This is the story of Anna Jarvis, who spent years fighting to create Mother's Day and then went broke, trying to protect it.

Anna Jarvis was born in West Virginia, the daughter of a Sunday school teacher

who helped start clubs to teach women

how to care for their children.

After one lecture,

Jarvis's mother prayed that someone would create a day

commemorating mothers for their service to humanity.

Twelve-year-old Anna never forgot that.

When her mother died, Jarvis promised at her gravesite that she'd answered the prayer.

Jarvis embarked on a relentless letter-writing campaign to persuade governors of every state to declare the second

Sunday of May as Mother's Day.

That was the closest Sunday to her mother's death anniversary.

The first Mother's Day service was held one morning in 1908.

And in 1914, after Anna had written so many letters that she had to buy a second house to

store them in, Congress finally passed a law, and President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation

declaring the first National Mother's Day. Jarvis had won. Or did she? It certainly wasn't the holiday she'd had in mind.

And that made her furious.

So furious that Jarvis spent the rest of her life railing against flower shop owners, card makers, and the candy industry for profiting off the holiday.

She felt they were trying to take it from her.

...