Fathers’ Day in America

The first formal “Father’s Day” was celebrated JUNE 19, 1910, in Spokane, Washington.

Sonora Louise Smart Dodd heard a church sermon on the newly established Mother’s Day and wanted to honor her father, Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, who had raised six children by himself after his wife died in childbirth.

Sonora Louise Smart Dodd drew up a petition supported by the Young Men’s Christian Association and the ministers of Spokane to celebrate Fathers’ Day.

In 1916, Woodrow Wilson sent a telegraph in support of the Spokane Fathers’ Day service.

On Tuesday, December 6, 1904, in his Fourth Annual Message to Congress, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:

“No Christian and civilized community can afford to show a happy-go-lucky lack of concern for the youth of to-day; for, if so, the community will have to pay a terrible penalty of financial burden and social degradation in the to-morrow….

The prime duty of the man is to work, to be the breadwinner; the prime duty of the woman is to be the mother, the housewife.

All questions of tariff and finance sink into utter insignificance when compared with the tremendous, the vital importance of trying to shape conditions so that these two duties of the man and of the woman can be fulfilled under reasonably favorable circumstances.”

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a proclamation in 1966 declaring the 3rd Sunday of June as Father’s Day.

President Nixon, in 1972, established Father’s Day as a permanent national observance.

On May 20, 1981, in a Proclamation of Father’s Day, President Ronald Reagan stated:

“‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it,’ Solomon tells us.

Clearly, the future is in the care of our parents.

Such is the responsibility, promise, and hope of fatherhood. Such is the gift that our fathers give us.”

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On Father’s Day, 1988, Ronald Reagan said:

“Children, vulnerable and dependent, desperately need security, and it has ever been a duty and a joy of fatherhood to offer it.

Being a father requires strength…and more than a little courage…to persevere, to fight discouragement, and to keep working for the family.”

Reagan continued:

“With God’s grace, fathers find the patience to teach, the fortitude to provide, the compassion to comfort, and the mercy to forgive.

All of this is to say that they find the strength to love their wives and children selflessly.”

President Reagan ended:

“Let us…express our thanks and affection to our fathers, whether we can do so in person or in prayer.”

Williams Jennings Bryan gave over 600 public speeches during his Presidential campaigns, with his most famous being “The Prince of Peace,” which was printed in The New York Times, September 7, 1913:

“Christ promoted peace by giving us assurance that a line of communication can be established between the Father above and the child below.”

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