Madeline Jones Procter

Madeline Jane Jones was born to William Henry Jones, III and Clara Elizabeth Burkhardt Jones on January 10, 1894 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Madeline had one brother, Ben Jr. The family moved to Philadelphia where Madeline met Anna Jarvis in 1909(1).

In 1909, Madeline applied for a secretarial job at Quaker Cab Company, which was owned by Anna Jarvis’s brother, Claude Jarvis. (1)(2) “He wasn’t in so Anna came out to see what I wanted. It was the day before Mother’s Day. She told me she liked my looks and wanted me to work for her instead of working for her brother. She handed me a washtub of red and white carnations and she took one. The carnations were chosen because it was inexpensive-only 3 cents in those days. We went out on the street corner of 13th and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia and gave them out, urging people to wear a red carnation if their mother was living and a white carnation if she was not and to write their mothers even if she lived in the same town.” (2) Madeline Jones and Anna Jarvis distributed the carnations free of charge to anyone who would take one. (1)(3) Madeline left school to become Anna Jarvis’s constant companion and sole co-worker and assisted Anna in letter writing and phone calls to civic groups, governors, legislators, ministers, editors, businessmen and every type of organization imaginable. They also planned celebrations to honor mothers throughout the country. (2)(9) Their chief goal was for everyone to write his or her mother for mother’s day and to wear a carnation. (2) At first Madeline and Anna were met with as much ridicule as acceptance, but they never gave up their cause taking their campaign to other metropolitan cities including New York, Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco. (1) (3) In 1912, West Virginia made Mother’s Day a statewide holiday. Pennsylvania followed suit the next year. (2) Also in 1912 a delegate from Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia introduced a resolution recognizing Anna Jarvis as the founder of Mother’s Day and the second Sunday in May was designated at Mother’s Day in the church at the General Conference meeting in Minneapolis, Minn.(2)(4) The two tireless workers rallied enough support to inspire President Woodrow Wilson to sign a joint resolution lauding mothers as “the greatest source of the country’s strength and inspiration. (3)(5) President Wilson then declared the second Sunday in May as the official day for honoring mothers. (1) Mother’s Day was officially established as an American holiday in 1914. (1)(2) The President’s proclamation was the culmination of years of crusading on the part of Anna Jarvis and Madeline Jones.

It did not take long after President Wilson’s decree for mother’s day to become commercialized. People bought fancy cards instead of writing letters and florists made profits over the flowers that marked the day. (7) Anna Jarvis grew bitter. (8) She deplored any form of commercialization of the holiday. (6) “What Miss Jarvis had in mind was a handwritten love letter to your mother, not the printed card.” (2) Madeline recalled seeing a “Mother’s Day Cocktail” soon after the holiday was proclaimed and said that“once we went into Wannamaker’s tea room and found a Mother’s Day Salad on the menu. Anna ordered it and when it came, she dumped it on the table and walked out.” (2)(7)(1) “Not long before Jarvis died in 1948, Jarvis complained to a reporter, “I wish I had never started the whole damn thing”. (2) Anna Jarvis died an embittered woman because of the commercial turn Mother’s Day had taken. (1) She also died penniless because she spent her money campaigning for Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day Concept Although the two women remained close lifelong friends, their lives hardly paralleled. Anna Jarvis came to condemn Mother’s Day for the commercialism it produced and died penniless, childless and bitter.(5) Madeline Jones tolerated its commercial success. “It is the thought that counts” and if the thought includes a gift, why that’s all right, too.”(7) Madeline Jones remained faithful to the holiday’s concept and led an abundant life blessed with many descendants.(9) “The world has changed. I don’t object to cards and gifts. Mother’s like to get gifts and children hate to write.”(2) My son was at Virginia Episcopal School, he use to send me red roses on Mother’s Day. Then I’d get the bill. But I didn’t mind because I knew he didn’t have any money.”(1)

In 1919. Madeline reluctantly parted company with Anna when she married Dr. Ivan M. Procter, a Marine Officer in the Medical Corps in WWII. (8) Madeline moved with her husband to his native home, Raleigh, North Carolina, where he set up his private practice and became North Carolina’s first board certified obstetrician and gynecologist and the first to use radium in the treatment of cervical cancer.(5) Madeline’s marriage and move to North Carolina was not the end of her devotion to Miss Jarvis or the idea of Mother’s Day.(1) Madeline had four children to whom they recall her as “a wonderful mother”.(9) She named her oldest son, Reginald Jarvis, for Anna Jarvis’ only brother. Her second daughter was born on Mother’s day in 1929. Her daughter wasn’t due for more than two weeks but Madeline took castor oil to induce labor on that day. (5) Her four children, are Reginald Jarvis, named for Anna Jarvis’s only brother, Doris, Marriott, born on Mother’s Day and Nancy.(1) Every year Madeline visited all her children’s schools to tell the story about the celebrations’ founding.(1)

Madeline’s Cameron Park home in Raleigh was a comfortable place for her four children and sixteen grand children. She was fun loving and related well to her grandchildren and their friends “who absolutely adored her”. (7) .Madeline cooked a Sunday feast for her entire family every week until three years before she died. (8) She was always “ soft spoken and somewhat sentimental and was especially fond of small children, birds, flowers. (7) She was firm on her ideas on child-rearing”. (7) Several of her grand children wrote a poem labeling their grandmother “ A great and groovy grandma with rebellion in her heart”. (5) Her daughter Marriott wrote a poem calling her mother “ a giver, a doer, an angel, a saint, whose laughter rings clearly, but never complaint.” “My mother was such a loving person and so uncritical. She loved the day and always saw something beautiful in it. Our friends adored her. She was the original ‘hippy’ and never put on airs-she was very down to earth”. (1) Madeline was an intuitive person. She was an unusual woman who was more connected to God not to have been a church person than anyone I’ve ever known. Her relationship with Him was personal and complete”(7). When Madeline died more than 100 teenagers showed up at the graveside at the historical Oakwood Cemetery which was a real statement of the love they felt for her (7). On her tombstone her children had these words carved “She Blessed Us”.

Madeline was long on love and short on discipline. She was “so totally family-oriented. That is why Mother’s Day was important to her…but every day was Mother’s Day to her.”(7) “If Madeline were alive today, she would still be urging people to write letters to their mom. She would tell us not to worry about the housework and go out and have a good time because the housework will be here when you get back. Enjoy your children. Go take them to the park. Go take them to feed the ducks. Don’t worry about cleaning out the closet”. (7) Madeline’s Mother

Madeline remembered her own mother as “the most wonderful person in the world”(1) “Though she was paralyzed and bedridden the last six years of her life, she was always thinking of others. She gave her wheelchair away to a crippled woman who lived across the street. She sang all the time and was always sorry for everybody else.” (1)