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Family and Life
First we Celebrated Mom on Mother's Day; now it's the old man's turn! This is where we Celebrate
Dad all year long. It consists of four pages:
by Rich Rodriguez
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Skip Heitzig, senior pastor of New Mexico's Calvary of
Albuquerque church, said that when God's about to do something good, He
will call a man, but when He's planning something really great, He will
use a woman. So with all the emphasis on Father's Day with ties,
sports, barbeques and all that wonderfully tradional he-man stuff, it
may surprise you that the person responsible for creating this holiday
a century ago was a woman.
In Spokane, Washington back in 1909, a year after the
first Mother's Day in Grafton, West Virginia, Sonora Louise Smart Dodd
heard a sermon at her church about the merits of Mother's Day, and of
setting aside a day to honor one's mother. She got the idea for doing
the same thing for fathers as well, and especially for her own father,
William Jackson Smart, who raised her and her five siblings by himself
after her mother died in childbirth in 1898.
On June 19, 1910, with the support of the Spokane
Ministerial Association and the local YWCA, the first Father's Day was
celebrated in the city of Spokane. The original date was actually the
5th, Dodd's father's birthday, but it was pushed back to the 15th
because there wasn't enough time to prepare.
The momentum for Father's Day caught on across the
United States and Canada, with many resolutions over the years in our
country to make it a national holiday. However, it wasn't until 1972
when Congress officially recognized it and President Richard Nixon
signed a proclamation declaring the third Sunday of every June as
Father's Day.
Mrs. Dodd never knew her mother, but she loved her
father very much, as evidenced with her drive to give fathers their due
with a national day of their own. And because of that love, today
fathers around the world are recognized for their efforts and
dedication to their families
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