Volume 16 , Issue 21

Father's Day History (104 years)

According to online sources, Father's Day was celebrated 104 years ago, on the third Sunday of June. It was on 19 July 1910, the governor of the state of Washington proclaimed the nation's first Father's Day. But it was not until 1972, 58 years after, that the day became a nationwide holiday in the United States.

On July 5, 1908, a West Virginia church sponsored the nation's first event explicitly in honor of fathers, A Sunday sermon in memory of the 362 men who had died in the previous December's explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah. But it was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday.

It was in 1909, a Spokane, Washington woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother's Day for male parents. She went to local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers and government officials to drum up support for her idea, and she was successful.

Washington State celebrated the nation's first statewide Father's Day on July 19, 1910. The holiday slowly spread. In 1916, President Wilson honored the day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Washington, DC.

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father's Day. But many men continued to disdain the day. They scoffed at the holiday's sentimental attempts to domesticate manliness with flowers and gift giving, or they derided the proliferation of such holidays as a commercial gimmick to sell more products, often paid for by the father himself.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

---