The idea for an official Father’s Day celebration came to a married daughter, seated in a church in Spokane, Washington in the United States, attentive to a Sunday sermon on Mother’s Day in 1910-two years after the first Mother’s Day observance in West Virginia.
The daughter was Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd. During the sermon, which extolled maternal sacrifices made for children, Mrs. Dodd realized that in her own family it had been her father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran, who had sacrificed-raising herself and five sons alone, following the early death of his wife in childbirth. For Mrs. Dodd, the hardships her father had endured on their eastern Washington farm called to mind the unsung feats of fathers everywhere.
Her proposed local Father’s Day celebration received strong support from the town’s ministers and members of the Spokane YMCA. The date suggested for the festivities, June 5, Mrs. Dodd’s father’s birthday which was three weeks away-had to be moved back to the nineteenth when ministers claimed they need extra time to prepare sermons on such a new subject as Father.
Newspapers across the country, already endorsing the need for a national Mother’s Day, carried stories about the unique Spokane observance. Interest in Father’s Day increased. Among the first notables to support Mrs. Dodd’s idea nationally was the orator and political leader William Jennings Bryan, who also backed Mother’s Day. Believing that fathers must not be slighted, he wrote to Mrs. Dodd, “too much emphasis cannot be placed upon the relation between parent and child.”
Father’s Day, however, was not so quickly accepted as Mother’s Day. Members of the all-male Congress felt that a move to proclaim the day official might be interpreted as a self-congratulatory pat on the back.
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson and his family personally observed the day and in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge recommended that states, if they wished, should hold their own Father’s Day observances. He wrote to the nation’s governors that “the widespread observance of this occasion is calculated to establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children, and also to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.”
Many people attempted to secure official recognition for Father’s Day. One of the most notable efforts was made in 1957, by Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who wrote forcefully to Congress that “Either we honor both our parents, mother and father, or let us desist from honoring either one. But to single out just one of our two parents and omit the other is the most grievous insult imaginable.”
Eventually, in 1972-sixty-two years after it was proposed-Father’s Day was permanently established by President Richard Nixon. Historians seeking an ancient precedent for an official Father’s Day observance have come up with only one: The Romans, every February, honored fathers-but only those deceased.
Well done Mr Blackmore. You are the best man for this ministry. Respect due to you.
Well it does not matter to me how that day was establihed, I am glad to be among the many boys and girls, woman and men, wives and mothers, who is able to claim a loving father for their own.
Thanks be to our God, who is also our Eternal Father, when we become like His Son Jesus Christ.
Greetings. I was blessed to have had a loving daddy you absolutely adored me. He and my mother gave their lives to Jesus while I was two months in my mother’s womb.He paved the way for me and with much prayer,as well as commitment to Abba Father,I came to know Abba at a very young age. Where would I have been had it not been for my father.He taught me to love,& embrace other people & cultures. I miss you so much daddy. mwah
Liz, I need to tell you this. “God has raised you up for such a time as this” As you delve deeper into His word, you are going to experience a wave of His anointing in your ministry as never before. You are called to build people up and encourage. You are an exhorter of the children of the Eternal Abba Father – creater of mankind.
I am so happy that Father’s Day was eventually established after all, because I loved my father very much, and although he is dead I still wish him Happy Fathers’ Day.
Hi there. I too lost my daddy when I was only nineteen. My memories of him are beautiful. Although extremely strict he showed me how easy it was to love people. People adored my dad and wherever I go, I bless people’s lives, their homes – and I am well received. Be a blessing beloved daughter of the most high.I believe our dads are watching through the portholes, and saying go, go go. They are proud of us.
And even today the saga continues as it pertains to giving credit and honor to both deserving parents. {Mind you I said deserving}. Every one might justify their reason why they come to recognized one more than the other it all boils down to ones own experiences, therefor their stories might be different,but one thing remains rooted that if a child does not honor their parents Father, or mother, they will fall short of the full blessings of either parents therefor choose your poison.Happy father day to all fathers and single parents who fill both roles effectively.