Father's Day

Father’s Day originated in the U.S. in 1909 when Sonora Louise Smart Dodd listened to a Mother’s Day sermon and pondered if there’s a day to honor mothers, why not a day to honor fathers?  Ms. Dodd began a rigorous campaign with the Spokane Ministerial Association and the local YMCA supporting her.  The first Father’s Day celebration was June 19, 1910, in Spokane.  President Woodrow Wilson approved the idea in 1916 and President Calvin Coolidge supported the idea of a national Father’s Day in 1924 to “establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers  the full measure of their obligations.”  President Lyndon Johnson signed a Presidential Proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June as Father’s Day on 1966.  In 1972, President Richard Nixon established a permanent national observance of Father’s Day to be held on the third Sunday of June.