Mother's Day Centennial Commemorative Coin Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. CAPITO. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to thank the gentleman from New York, not only for his support of this bill but also for his eloquent statement in support, not just of the coin but of mothers in general. I want to thank him for yielding time to me.

Madam Speaker, as he said, this Sunday, families across the Nation will gather to honor their mothers and grandmothers. By the way, I am a new grandmother. I had to put that in. They will show their gratitude for the contributions these women have made not only to their immediate families but also to their communities at large. The tradition of honoring our mothers on the second Sunday in May goes back almost a century. It is a very interesting and quite simple history.

The tradition of Mother's Day began in the mountains of Appalachia, when a woman named Anna Jarvis sought a more formal way to honor her mother. Her mother's name was Anna Reeves Jarvis, who had passed away in 1905. Ms. Jarvis, a native of Webster County in the wilds of West Virginia, began working with the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church of Grafton, West Virginia, to honor her mother and her mother's contributions to the community.

In 1908, the church officially proclaimed the third anniversary of Anna Reeves Jarvis' passing to be Mother's Day, but Anna Jarvis was not to be deterred. She continued her efforts to honor mothers across the State of West Virginia. In 1910, she was successful in lobbying and in encouraging the Governor of West Virginia to issue the first Mother's Day proclamation, encouraging all West Virginians to attend church and to wear white carnations in honor of their mothers.

Ms. Jarvis built upon her success at home and began a nationwide effort to have Federal recognition of Mother's Day. After 4 years of hard work and dedication, President Woodrow Wilson issued a presidential proclamation in 1914 encouraging all Americans to fly the American flag at their homes on the second Sunday of May as a public expression of the love and reverence for mothers of our Nation.

West Virginians, we are very proud of our heritage and of the role that our State played in the creation and founding of Mother's Day.

Last year I introduced this underlying legislation, which calls for the minting of a commemorative coin in 2014 to honor the centennial of proclaiming and designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day. This coin will be minted in 2014, and as the gentleman from New York expressed, the proceeds of the sales of the coin will go to the Susan G. Komen Foundation and also to the National Osteoporosis Foundation. I wanted to pick foundations that I knew were dedicated to women's health so that the money will be used for research and development to help the mothers of the future cope with the tragic consequences of osteoporosis or cancer.

As an aside, I would like to wish my mother, Shelley Riley Moore, a very happy and wonderful Mother's Day this Sunday. She has been a very special person in my life and in the life of my entire family. And while that's a personal aside, I know we all feel the same way about our mothers, and taking the time to tell them. I would encourage everyone to do that.

I would like to thank the 291 Members of the House who have joined me in this effort allowing the bill to be considered today. I would encourage the passage of this bill, and again I would encourage the recognition of the place that the mothers of America and really across the world play in the lives of all of us here today.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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