After the carnage of the Second World War, the members of the now defunct Victory Chapter of the American Gold Star Mothers in St. Petersburg, Florida, knew better than most what it was to lose their sons, daughters, husbands, and other near relatives in war.
“We’d rather not talk about it,” one mother, whose son was killed in WWII, told the St. Petersburg Times fifteen years after the war ended. “It’s a terrible scar that never heals. We hope there will never be another war so no other mothers will have to go through this ordeal.”
But thanks to our wars in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan—not to mention our proxy wars around the globe—too many moms (and dads too) now have to mourn family members badly scarred or lost to wars dreamed up by the demagogic, ideological, and myopic.
Few Americans know that Mother’s Day was initially suggested by two peace-minded mothers, Julia Ward Howe and Anna Reeves Jarvis. Howe had lived through the Civil War and became a pacifist, opposed to all wars. Though not a mother, Katherine Lee Bates wrote “America the Beautiful” and the poem “Glory” about war’s impact on mothers. More recently, mothers like Lenore Breslauer helped found anti-war movements.
On this Mother’s Day, peace and justice seems further away than ever, with over one hundred thousand Americans killed or harmed in endless wars, not counting millions of others. They all had mothers.