Every year in the U.S., we celebrate Mother’s Day on the second Sunday in May, and Father’s Day on the third Sunday in June. Today, let’s take a brief look at the history of these very special national holidays.

Mother’s Day: Anna Jarvis is recognized as the Mother of Mother’s Day, as she is historically known to be the lady who worked so very hard to bestow honor on all mothers. During her childhood, Anna Jarvis got the inspiration of celebrating Mother’s Day from her own mother, Mrs. Anna Marie Reeves-Jarvis.

Mrs. Reeves-Jarvis passed away in 1905. Her loving daughter, Anna Jarvis, never forgot her mother’s strong desire of having a Mother’s Day in the United States.

Anna Jarvis started her personal celebration of Mother’s Day by sending carnation flowers to her church in Grafton, West Virginia, to honor her mother. Carnations were her mother’s favorite flower and Anna felt that they symbolized a mother’s pure love.

Anna Jarvis, along with many others who supported her Mother’s Day efforts, wrote letters to people in positions of power lobbying for the official declaration of a Mother’s Day holiday.

Their persistent efforts paid off. By 1911, Mother’s Day was celebrated in almost every state in the Union. Then, on May 8, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a Joint Resolution designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

Father’s Day: The first celebration of Father’s Day in the United States was over 100 years ago when it was first observed on July 5, 1908, in Fairmont, West Virginia. For several years it remained a local event in West Virginia. Several years later, in 1910, a Father’s Day celebration was held in Spokane, Washington, at the local YMCA by Sonora Smart Dodd who was born in Arkansas.

Ms. Dodd promoted the Father’s Day celebration in Spokane to honor her father, William Jackson Smart, a American Civil War veteran, who was a single parent who raised his six children there in Spokane.

As more and more local communities started to celebrate Father’s Day, there was interest in making it an official nationally recognized event.

The first bill to accord national recognition of the holiday was introduced in Congress in 1913. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson went to Spokane to speak in a Father’s Day celebration and wanted to make it official, but Congress resisted, fearing that it would become commercialized.

Nearly a decade later, President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the day be observed by the nation, but he stopped short of issuing a national proclamation. Two earlier attempts to formally recognize the holiday had been defeated by Congress.

Many years went by, and then, in 1957, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith strongly supported making Father’s Day a National event. She felt it was inappropriate not to have a Father’s Day celebration in the same manner that Mother’s Day had previously been made a national event.

She strongly stated that it made much more sense for our nation to honor both of our parents.

Subsequently, in 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. Six years later, the third Sunday in June was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.

Thank you, Mothers and Fathers, for all you do!

Editor’s note: Dr. Jim Surrell, author of “SOS (Stop Only Sugar) Diet,” has his practice at the Digestive Health Clinic at Upper Peninsula Health System – Marquette. Requests for health topics for this column are encouraged.