As Mother’s Day gained traction around the country in the early years of the last century, Father’s Day was a little slower to pick up steam. During a Mother’s Day service, Sonora Smart Dodd decided fathers needed to be honored, too. Her own father, Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, reared six children alone after her mother died in childbirth with her youngest sibling.
Sonora wanted to celebrate Father’s Day in her hometown of Spokane, Washington, on June 5th, her father’s birthday, but the mayor pushed it two weeks later, to have more time to plan the festivities. So the first Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19, 1910.
It started to pick up steam around the country, with Calvin Coolidge publicly supporting it in 1924. Then, in 1938, the National Council for the Promotion of Father’s Day, which was formed by men’s clothing retailers in New York City, took up the cause and started to lobby both local and federal governments. And yet, it still languished as a national holiday.
Finally, Lyndon Johnson honored fathers with the first presidential proclamation in 1966. Still not quite there! It wasn’t until Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972 that the third Sunday in June was officially declared Father’s Day. So, let’s celebrate all the fathers in our lives!