Mother’s Day Mayhem

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios

History, Society & Culture

4.5 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

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Summary

May 9, 1905. After weeks of illness and visits from ten different doctors, Anna Jarvis’s mother dies. In the days that follow, Jarvis makes a promise to herself: to fulfill her mother’s dream of creating a holiday devoted to celebrating mothers. Her campaign to create and define Mother’s Day would become her life’s work, and also her downfall. How did Anna Jarvis become a minor celebrity known for her fanatical devotion to this annual holiday? And why did she come to hate the holiday she created?

Special thanks to Katharine Antolini, author of Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Struggle for Control of Mother’s Day.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:06.5	History this week, May 9, 1905.
0:11.9	I'm Sally Helm.
0:16.3	A few months back, after a big outing to see a speech by President Theodore Roosevelt,
0:21.1	Anne Reeves Jarvis started to feel funny.
0:25.1	She tells her daughter Anna that she has some kind of faintness in her heart.
0:29.0	Anna's worried.
0:30.3	She's very close to her mother.
0:32.5	They send for a doctor.
0:36.3	The first of 10 doctors who will visit Anne in the coming weeks.
0:40.7	One says it's the kidneys.
0:42.7	Another says it's the stomach.
0:44.5	Another says there's nothing to do because it's just old age.
0:48.0	Anna is trying everything that she can to help.
0:51.5	But then, one afternoon, she later writes,
0:55.0	a change came as gently and insidiously as a shadow.
1:00.0	Anne Reeves Jarvis begins lapsing in and out of consciousness,
1:04.5	having strange dreams, hallucinating.
1:07.5	She thinks that Anna is taking them on a journey and insists that she make travel preparations.
1:14.0	And finally, on May 9, Anna walks into the room where her mother is lying sick.
1:20.0	It's 8.30 in the morning.
1:22.0	Sunlight is coming through the windows.
	...

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