June 15 is a special day this year for dads across America. On Father’s Day, they’re told how much they’re loved and thanked for what they do or did as fathers.

This special celebration isn’t as old as many of America’s events. It began almost 100 years ago in a city similar in size to Knoxville. Spokane, Washington, on the eastern side of the state, was the home of Sonora Smart Dodd. The sermon in church on Mother’s Day in 1909 made her think about her father, a man who had raised her and her five siblings after her mother had died in childbirth. Dodd wanted to let him know how much she appreciated the many sacrifices he had made for them.

During June, the month of Civil War veteran Henry Jackson Smart’s birth, the first Father’s Day celebration was proclaimed by Spokane’s mayor and held on June 19. As the decades passed, the day of celebration continued to gain momentum and in 1924 President Calvin Coolidge recognized Father’s Day. But it was still a long way from being an official celebration.

 As the idea grew, it spurred an organization called the National Father’s Day Committee which was formed in New York City in 1942. Each year, they choose men to be “Father of the Year.” The first, in 1942, was Douglas MacArthur, the World War II general. Recent familiar men who received the honor are Hulk Hogan, Jack Klugman, Larry King and Donald Trump.

 President Lyndon B. Johnson officially proclaimed the day as a national holiday in 1966, made it the third Sunday in June and issued the first presidential proclamation about Father’s Day. President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972, making it permanent. The day was already part of our culture by this time. On June 17, 1973, President Richard Nixon wished the men in space on the Skylab 1 space station a happy Father’s Day.

 Other locations such as Fairmont, West Virginia held earlier Father’s Day celebrations, this one in 1908, but no one carried forward with the idea like Sonora Smart Dodd did. One tradition for the day is to wear a red rose to show if a father is still living and a white rose if he is deceased. Father’s Day in Great Britain and Canada is also celebrated the third Sunday in June and in Australia it’s the first Sunday in September.

The U.S. Census estimates there are 66.3 million fathers in America. While the holiday started out with a more spiritual leaning, it’s become commercialized and more than 100 million greeting cards will be bought for the day making it the fourth largest card giving event of the year.

President Gerald Ford in his 1975 proclamation honored all in the father role, “These men who have given so much of themselves are our natural fathers, our foster fathers, our adoptive fathers and our big brothers.”

President Bush said in his Father’s Day 2007 Proclamation, “On Father’s Day and throughout the year, we honor the men who have taken on the great joy and responsibility of fatherhood, and we celebrate their extraordinary impact and influence.” Remember your dad on June 15.

---

Comments

Add New Search

Write comment
Name:
Email:	do not notifynotify
Website:
Title:
	Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.12

Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.