Nine Rocky Mountain Puzzles

May 28, 1876, Mrs. Ann Reeves Jarvis was teaching her Sunday school class, which included her daughter Anna Jarvis, then 12, about famous mothers from the Bible. It was perhaps the first time that little Anna realized what a thankless sacrifice motherhood could be. As an adult, Anna would claim her mother’s lesson inspired her to create a holiday honoring mothers and motherhood. She wrote thousands of letters to prominent figures of the day (including President Teddy Roosevelt and Mark Twain) asking for their support in her endeavor. Mother’s Day became an official U.S. holiday in 1914. Jarvis would later denounce the holiday’s commercialization and spent the latter part of her life trying to remove it from the calendar. Jarvis herself never became a mother; she died a spinster in 1948. In fact, only one of Anna’s siblings – a brother - had children, and his only grandchild died childless in the 1980s.