The Father's Day Story

It is also said that Harry Meek, President of the (Chicago Branch) Lions' Club, celebrated the first Father's Day with his club member in 1915, the day they had chosen was the third Sunday in June, closest to Meek's own birthday.

Whichever may be the first true Father's Day, the strongest promoter was Sonora Louise Smart Dodd of Spokane Washington. In 1909, Mrs. Dodd got the idea of a Father's Day while listening to a Mother's Day sermon. Her intend was to honour her father, William Jackson Smart,  a Civil War veteran. Mr. Smart, after his wife died in 1898, while giving birth to their sixth child, raised their six children on his own. Mrs. Dodd realized the selflessness her father had shown by raising six children including the newborn by himself on a farm in eastern Washington state.

Mrs. Dodd drew up a partition in which she recommended the adoption of a national "Father's Day". She received support from the local Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), and the Spokane Ministerial Association. Through her relentless effort, Spokane celebrated the first Father's Day on June 19, 1910. 

Finally, states and organizations began lobbying the Congress to declare Father's Day a national, annual event. President Woodrow Wilson, in 1916, approved the idea, but it was not recognized as a national, annual event until 1926 by President Galvin Coolidge, who stated: "...establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations." From that day on, father's had been recognized and honoured by their families on the 3rd Sunday in June. The actual presidential proclamation occurred in 1966 by President Lyndon Johnson, in which he declared the 3rd Sunday of June as Father's Day.

Father's Day has been adopted by Canada, Europe and several other countries.

QUOTES ABOUT DAD 

"A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when 
she is a woman he turns her back again." -- Enid Bagnold 

"None of you can ever be proud enough of being the child of SUCH a 
Father who has not his equal in this world-so great, so good, so 
faultless. Try, all of you, to follow in his footsteps and don't be
discouraged, for to be really in everything like him none of you, 
I am sure, will ever be. Try, therefore, to be like him in some 
points, and you will have acquired a great deal." -- Victoria, Queen
of England 

"That is the thankless position of the father in the family-the
provider for all, and the enemy of all." -- J. August Strindberg 

"It is a wise father that knows his own child." -- William Shakespeare

"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember 
he was." -- Anne Sexton 

"One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters." -- 
English Proverb 

"To be a successful father . . . there's one absolute rule: when 
you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years." -- 
Ernest Hemingway 

"A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like
his father." -- Gabriel García Márquez 

"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud 

"I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example." -- Mario Cuomo

"Be kind to thy father, for when thou wert young,
Who loved thee so fondly as he?
He caught the first accents that fell from thy tongue,
And joined in thy innocent glee."
-- Margaret Courtney 

"If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, 
let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any
fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right." -- 
Bill Cosby 

"Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him 
father!" -- Lydia M. Child 

When I was a boy of 14,
my father was so ignorant
I could hardly stand to have
the old man around.

But when I got to be 21,
I was astonished at how much
the old man had learned in seven years.

By Mark Twain

"It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for 
father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed
knowing them all." -- Alice Walker