Celebrating Father’s Day: A Journey Through Its History
- John O’Brien, Jr.
- June 1, 2024
- Edited 3 weeks ago
Table of Contents
Father's Day
On June 16, we will be celebrating Father’s Day. Do you know the history of Father’s Day? The first time that Father’s Day was celebrated in the United States was on July 5, 1908, in a West Virginia church. This was a local remembrance of the men who died in the worst mining accident in U.S. history.
In 1909, Sonora Smart Dodd tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day. She had been raised along with her five siblings by a Civil War veteran who was a widower. She went to local churches, the YMCA, local businesses, and local government to support her idea of honoring fathers. It was successful, and the first statewide Father’s Day was celebrated in the State of Washington on June 19, 1910.
President Wilson tried to have Father’s Day as a national holiday in 1913, but it did not pass in Congress. In 1921, President Coolidge signed a resolution “to establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.” It took more than 40 years after President Coolidge’s resolution before another president acted. President Johnson signed an executive order that Father’s Day would be celebrated on the third Sunday in June. Although three presidents wrote in favor of celebrating our fathers, they did not pass legislation ratifying the holiday.
In 1970, Congress passed Joint Resolution 187 that called for the nation to “offer public and private expressions of such day to the abiding love and gratitude which they bear for their fathers.” In 1972, President Richard Nixon signed the resolution into law; since then, Father’s Day has been a national holiday.
I would like to wish all of our fathers a Happy Father’s Day, and I quote from My Irish Father, author unknown: “God made a special person with a twinkle in his eyes. A smile upon his loving face. A person strong and wise. He called this man my father. A descendant of the sod. My Irish Father here on earth. My special gift from God.”
