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Anna M. Jarvis of Philadelphia is often given credit for making Mother’s Day a national holiday in the United States. Following the death of her own mother in 1905, Jarvis initially proposed a religious holiday, which was observed in churches in West Virginia and Pennsylvania in 1908. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson issued the first Mother’s Day proclamation, stating that the observance serves as a “public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.” That same year the United States Congress, by a joint resolution approved on May 8, 1914, officially designated the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.
Without taking anything away from Anna Jarvis or Woodrow Wilson, it should be noted that springtime celebrations of mothers (both religious and state-sponsored) were being held in Ancient Greece thousands of years ago. They honored Rhea, the Mother of the Gods. She was married to her brother Cronus, who fathered their six divine children: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Demeter, Hestia and Hera.
Suffice it to say that Cronus fell far short of being an ideal father. Having been warned that he would be dethroned by one of his children, he decided to swallow all of them. At that point, Rhea established her credentials as a good mother by tricking her husband/brother into not devouring Zeus. She did so with the assistance of her own mother, Gaia, who wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and duped Cronus into thinking it was his son and swallowing it.
 Gaia was an impressive mother in her own right. Sometimes known as Earth or Mother Earth, she gave birth parthogenetically (i.e. without the participation of a male) to Pontus (the Sea) and Uranus (the Sky). She then married her son Uranus and gave birth to the Titans, the Cyclopes and other unsavory monsters and spirits. Gaia was also a pretty mean mother, who cajoled her son Cronus into castrating his father, Uranus, and even gave him an adamantine sickle with which to perform the surgery.
Nowadays, Gaia enjoys a much kinder and gentler reputation, thanks in large part to James Lovelock, who in 1979 published Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. In this scholarly work Lovelock defines Gaia as a “complex entity involving the Earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.” While Lovelock’s so-called Gaia Hypothesis has sparked a good deal of controversy in the scientific community, there’s no denying that it has been responsible for greatly elevating the level of societal concern for the earth’s environment and ecological systems.
This enhanced level of environmental awareness has greatly influenced the way we at Schlafly operate our business, so much so that on April 5, 2006 the Great Rivers Environmental Law Center recognized our efforts by presenting me with the Lewis C. Green Environmental Service Award. As I said in my acceptance speech that night and still want to reiterate, this honor was really earned by dozens of our employees and not by me personally. Among the things that made the evening so memorable was the fact that the award was presented to me by the late Tom Eagleton and, as Senator Eagleton announced at the time, this would be the last public speech he would ever give.
Tom Eagleton was a loyal customer at The Tap Room from the very beginning. Shortly after we opened he sent me one of his patented handwritten notes that said in its entirety, “Tom, great food. You need to raise the prices. Tom E.” Among the servers who regularly waited on Senator Eagleton in those early days was Cindy Roberts, who later moved to Napa Valley, where she got a job at a restaurant called Tre Vigne, in St. Helena. (Tre Vigne, it’s worth noting, charges prices closer to what Tom thought we should be charging.) It was there that she once again found herself waiting on Tom Eagleton, who was much more of an aficionado of wine than of beer.
Notwithstanding his preference for wine over beer, Tom and his family had longstanding ties with Anheuser-Busch. For many years his father, Mark Eagleton, had represented both the brewery and Gussie Busch personally. Shortly after graduating from law school Tom went to work in the legal department at Anheuser-Busch. And several observers have noted that Gussie Busch publicly switched his support from the Democratic party to the GOP when George McGovern unceremoniously dumped Tom Eagleton from the ticket in 1972. Whether there was a cause and effect relationship between these two events has never been conclusively established.
Given Senator Eagleton’s long history with Anheuser-Busch, I found his support of Schlafly Beer and The Tap Room especially gratifying. I was therefore quite pleased to be able to tell him, not too long before he died, about the beer festival on which we were collaborating with A-B. If he could convince Democrats and Republicans to work together for the common good, there was no reason the breweries in St. Louis couldn’t do likewise.
The Saint Louis Brewers Heritage Festival will be held May 10-12 in Forest Park, not far from where Senator Eagleton lived. With the participation of several local breweries and the support of The Mayor’s Office and the Convention and Visitors Commission, it promises to be the Mother of All Beer Festivals. Not even Anna Jarvis, Woodrow Wilson or worshippers of Gaia and Rhea could have come up with a better way to kick off Mother’s Day weekend.
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