Beyond the Tie: Some Father’s Day History

I love Father's Day. It is unfortunate that it does not get the same attention as Mother's Day. It was refreshing to read the story of how it all began. Any one born after 1972, has always celebrated Father's Day. I wonder what people did before to honor their father before a day was sat aside.

The idea of formally recognizing a day to celebrate dads came from a father’s daughter 101 years ago. Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Wash., was listening to a Mother’s Day sermon when she decided to lobby the Spokane Ministerial Alliance about honoring a day for fathers. Dodd’s mother died giving birth to her sixth child, leaving the parenting of five boys and a girl to her father, William Smart.

Dodd asked that the day be June 5, her father’s birthday, but the city clergy settled upon the third Sunday in June. As a result of her efforts, the first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane in 1910.

In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson attended Father’s Day celebrations in Spokane and 50 years later President Lyndon Johnson signed a proclamation declaring the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day from then forward. In 1972 President Nixon established it as a permanent day of national observance.

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