The history of Father’s Day goes back to 1908 when a woman named Grace Golden Clayton organized a memorial service at a church in Fairmont, West Virginia to honor her own father and 361 other men who were killed the previous year in a coal mining explosion. This was the country’s first-ever event to strictly honor fathers.
The following year, a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd started her quest to establish Father’s Day as a holiday. Dodd was one of six children raised by her single father and thought fathers should be honored in the same way as mothers. After a year of petitioning her local community and government, Dodd’s home state of Washington celebrated its first official Father’s Day on June 19, 1910. Over the years, the celebration of Father’s Day spread from state to state, and after a long fight, it was finally declared a national holiday in 1972 when President Richard Nixon signed it into law. Now, we celebrate with funny Father’s Day quotes.
It took more than 60 years from the birth of the idea to Father’s Day actually being recognized as a holiday, but a lot happened to threaten the parent-celebrating holidays during that time. In the 1920s and 1930s, there was a national movement to get rid of both Mother’s and Father’s Day and replace them with one “Parent’s Day.” Beyond that, some men didn’t even want a Father’s Day, to begin with. Some saw it as a “Hallmark holiday,” invented for the sole purpose of a commercial gimmick, and as many fathers were the sole breadwinners at the time, they didn’t particularly want to spend their hard-earned cash on flowers and chocolates. The Great Depression and World War II, helped boost the idea of Father’s Day. Struggling retailers pushed the gift-giving holiday during the Depression, and during the war, Father’s Day became a way to honor the many fathers serving overseas. By the time President Nixon signed the proclamation making Father’s Day a holiday, it was already a national institution.