A Day of Love and Thanks : Celebrations: Single moms enjoy a luncheon in Beverly Hills and 450 mothers take part in a festive Reseda party on a special day for special people.

While most moms were waiting for that special phone call, a meal that someone else cooked or even to be treated like a queen for a day, more than 800 mothers and their children got more than that, enjoying a special Mother’s Day luncheon Sunday afternoon for single mothers only.

Commenting that many single mothers often don’t receive the praise they deserve, Suge Knight, co-founder and president of rap label Death Row Records, which hosted the event, said the luncheon is a way to give single mothers a day of celebration, and a chance to mingle with other single mothers.

Knight, who attributed his own success to his mother’s constant nurturing, said mothers--especially those who are single--often struggle to make ends meet and grapple with raising a child alone.

“I feel like a lot of single mothers work hard and have so much daily stress in their lives,” he said. “That’s why we are doing this.”

In Reseda, about 450 mothers and their children, even grandchildren, gathered at the Jewish Home for the Aging for what organizers billed as “The Largest Mother’s Day Celebration in the World.”

And certainly, all of Sunday’s Mother’s Day events were in the running to be the happiest.

At the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, Death Row, the nation’s premier rap label and home of recording artists Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre, presented its second annual Mother’s Day luncheon. Members of the capacity crowd had registered for the free event by calling a local radio station two weeks ago.

Seated at round tables ornamented with spring flowers, most of the mothers chatted or sorted through gifts such as certificates for cosmetic make-overs. After a lunch of chicken and creme brulee, they were entertained by singers on the host’s record label.

For an afternoon that was special for most of them--if not unique--many came attired as if for church, in lacy dresses and Sunday hats.

Sara Gallaway, a 25-year-old professional courier, traveled all the way from Riverside with her 3-year-old son, Brandon. She said it felt good to know that someone cares about women such as her.

“They must love their own mothers a lot to give something like this for so many people they don’t even know,” Gallaway said.

Knight made that point when he told all the children to get up, give their mothers a kiss and tell them, “I love you.”

“There’s one thing you gotta realize,” he told the children. “You will always have one mother--just one.”

Most of the women said the afternoon was an opportunity to escape life’s pressures and be pampered.

“If you’re a single mother and you have young kids, most times (the kids) can’t really do anything like this for you on Mother’s Day,” said 27-year-old Kim Jones, who brought her two children, Mychal, 7, and Shaina, 8, to the luncheon. “That’s why this is good. It’s like a glamour day for me.”

Among the guests was Snoop Doggy Dogg’s mother, Beverly Broadus. Her son was not with her, she said, but he sent her a big bouquet of flowers and a note expressing his thanks to her for being there for him all these years.

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Music was part of the day’s events in Reseda too, at the Jewish Home for the Aging.

Rose Sattler didn’t recognize the tune--it sounded more Latin than Jewish--and certainly didn’t know the proper steps. But she gripped her walker and danced a ferocious sort of hora/Charleston combination--a Mother’s Day dance for a special friend.

“She’s going to be 102 years old in June,” the 89-year-old Sattler said. “She’s having trouble breathing and couldn’t be here.”

Yet 450 mothers did make it Sunday, along with more than 1,100 of their offspring.

Centenarian Sadye Hirschson--wrapped like many of the mothers in a knitted shawl and sitting in the spring sunlight--was surrounded by progeny born a century after her own parents emigrated from Poland, and decades after she took an ocean liner from New York, through the Panama Canal to Los Angeles.

Over there, she pointed out Sunday, were a daughter, her daughter’s son and her daughter’s son’s sons. “Four generations,” she said with a bright smile. “Four generations,” her relatives echoed.

Other daughters wheeled their mothers over to shake hands with the day’s host, Oscar-winning actor Martin Landau, and the sons fetched kosher lunches.

While the Reseda gathering was sizable, it represented only a tiny fraction of all those being honored Sunday. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, 73.9 million women in the United States have an average of 2.7 people calling them “Mom.”

Those at the Jewish Home for the Aging, however, have done considerably more parenting than the typical American mother. While the average age at the facility is 90, there were more 100-year-old mothers than 80-year-old ones on hand Sunday, said Murray Wood, the home’s vice president for fund development.

In Downtown Los Angeles, the Union Rescue Mission put on a fashion show and luncheon for about 200 homeless women, many of them mothers, and their children.

“They cut my hair, they styled it, they put makeup on me. I look nice,” said Josette St. Pierre, 19, one of nine women who volunteered for a make-over and modeled for the audience.

Some of the guests were staying at the mission, while others were invited from sidewalks and overnight shelters in the area.

The menu, much of it donated, included roast beef, grilled chicken breast, rice pilaf, vegetables, pasta salad and cake. Music was provided by Thomas Ross, a saxophonist, and the Rococo String Quartet of the USC School of Music.