“A father carries pictures where his money used to be.”
-Steve Martin
Settled on our calendars and marked the third summer Sunday in June comes the most humble of all our holidays. More socks, ties, and crayon-covered cards are awarded on this day than on any other in the year. Some call the day “Dad’s Second Christmas.” No matter our age, if we are still blessed with a living father, we celebrate. If Dad has passed, we remember him. Dad’s day is, of course, Father’s Day. How did it start? I wanted to know…
While it seems that some forms of father remembrances were practiced even in ancient times and at various places, as it turns out, two intrepid women deserve credit for launching our American version of Father’s Day.
We know that Mother’s Day gained traction first (originally organized in 1908 and then recognized as a national holiday in 1914). Perhaps inspired by the success of Mother’s Day, the first Father’s Day service occurred in Fairmont, Virginia in July of 1908. But the seed of this first Father’s Day was birthed from tragedy.
The Monongah mining disaster was the result of a coal mine explosion that happened on December 6, 1907, in Monongah, West Virginia. It has been described as “the worst mining disaster in American history.” The official death toll was 361, but it is believed that the actual number was much higher. The disaster widowed 250 and left over 1,000 children fatherless. Overwhelming grief permeated the entire state.
Six months later, in the summer of 1908, Grace Golden Clayton was mourning the loss of her own father. Prompted by her grief and considering the recent and incalculable loss of fathers in the mine disaster, she organized a special memorial service, held on July 5, 1908. This observance was well received, but did not, however, become an annual event, in part because of its date. They tried to continue the practice every year, but the day was always overshadowed by the 4th of July. But Father’s Day was to catch on in a different place, on the other side of the country. The next year, in 1909, a woman in Washington State would take up the cause.
The practical origins of Father’s Day as we celebrate it here in America are primarily the work of Sonora Louise Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington. She initially proposed the idea of a Father’s Day to honor her father, William Jackson Smart.
William Smart was a farmer and Civil War veteran. Born in 1842 in Arkansas, he had the unusual experience of fighting on both sides during the war. As an Arkansas native, he first fought for the Confederacy. But in 1863 he switched sides to fight for the Union. When the war ended, William married his first wife Elizabeth. In 1878, she died and William was left to care for his three children – an infant daughter, a five-year-old son, and a six-year-old son.
After two years of single fatherhood, William remarried in 1880. His second wife Ellen had three children of her own. William and Ellen, apparently determined to be fruitful and multiply, added seven more children to their family and moved from Arkansas to a farm in the Pacific Northwest.
William was widowed again in 1898 when Ellen died. His older children were grown, but he was left to raise his 16-year-old daughter Sonora, and five sons, ages 7-15. Sonora said in later years that her dad performed the role of father “with courage and selflessness until we were all in homes of our own.” William Smart was a good dad.
While attending a Mother’s Day service in 1909, Sonora Dodd was inspired. She thought we needed a holiday for fathers. Soon she convinced the Spokane Ministerial Association and the YMCA to set aside a Sunday in June to celebrate fathers. On June 19, 1910, the first Father’s Day events were held in Spokane. These popular and publicized events struck a chord with the rest of the country, soon reaching all the way to Washington, D.C.
In 1913 a Father’s Day bill was introduced in Congress. In spite of an endorsement from President Woodrow Wilson, it did not pass. Eight years later, President Calvin Coolidge signed a resolution in favor of Father’s Day, but nothing more happened. Later, in 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed an executive order proposing that Father’s Day be celebrated the third Sunday in June. But it wasn’t until 1972 during Richard Nixon’s administration that Congress passed an act establishing Father’s Day as a national holiday.
This Father’s Day, if you are still blessed to have your dad, consider doing these three things. Forgive his failures. Being a dad is hard work and it’s easy to make mistakes. Then give him a good, hard hug. Dads need these too. And tell him you love him. That’s all he needs. And maybe just one more pair of socks…