This year, Father’s Day happens to fall on the official advent of summer, an entirely satisfying coincidence since today, most celebrations for dear ol’ dad usually involve golf clubs, BBQ grills or fishing poles. Father’s Day is celebrated in about 70 other countries around the globe, many of them on the third Sunday in June, but it all started right here in America around the turn of the last century, not long after Mother’s Day was recognized as a commercial holiday in 1908. By 1909, 45 states observed Mother’s Day. Then in 1914, as World War I was marauding across western Europe, Woodrow Wilson, a President governing a nation with a massive immigrant population, many of whom had close family members living in counties that made up the Allies as well as the Central Powers, approved a resolution declaring the second Sunday in May a National holiday honoring, “that tender, gentle army, the mothers of America.”
Father’s Day was slower to catch on and its origin is attributed to separate events on opposite sides of the country. As the story goes, a young woman living in Spokane, Wash. named Sonora Smart Dodd was inspired to campaign for the creation of a holiday honoring fathers after listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in the spring of 1909. Sonora, along with her five other siblings were raised on a farm by their widowed father. William Smart, a Civil War veteran who lost his wife during the birth of their sixth child, took on the burden of raising the family alone. Sonora petitioned state and local government officials, church and civil organizations, business owners and even the YMCA drumming up support of her idea that Father’s should be honored too. In 1910 the State of Washington recognized Father’s Day as the third Sunday in June for the very first time.
Previously, in July of 1908, across the country, in Fairmont, W.V., a Methodist Church held a special service in honor of some 362 mine workers that had been killed in an underground explosion earlier that winter; in what came to be known as the Monongah Disaster. The mining tragedy instantly created 250 widows and the town of Fairmont found themselves with over 1,000 fatherless children. The United Bureau of Mines was formed as a direct result of the Monongah Disaster but an official national holiday recognizing fatherhood did not come into being until several decades later.
Woodrow Wilson recognized Washington state’s official Father’s Day holiday in 1916 less than a year before sending tens of thousands of men off to join WWI. In 1924, President Coolidge urged states to recognize the holiday, but many men themselves were less than enthusiastic about a celebration in which fathers received un-manly, sentimental gifts chiefly paid for by their own wages.
In the 1920’s and 1930’s there was a movement to scrap both individual holidays in favor of a single “Parent’s Day” but it never quite took hold. By WWII, retailers around the country caught the gravy-train of patriotism and urged American consumers that buying tobacco, striped socks and golf clubs was the way to honor the brave fighting American troops overseas and support the war effort for the betterment of all.
It wasn’t until 1972 when Richard Nixon, in what is surmised to have been a keen publicity maneuver in the midst of his fierce bid for re-election, signed a proclamation making Father’s Day a federal holiday at long last, as a gesture of good will bestowed upon fathers across America.
So enjoy the first day of summer in beautiful Green River and celebrate dear ol’ dad with a round of golf, fishing at the gorge or barbecuing his favorite meal - Happy Father’s Day!
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