Father’s Day dates to 1908 when Grace Golden Clayton organized a memorial service at her 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 honoring fathers.
The following year, Sonora Smart Dodd began a crusade to establish Father’s Day as a national 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, growing in popularity.
In the 1920s and 1930s, there was a national movement to eliminate both Mother’s and Father’s Day and replace them with one “Parent’s Day.” Even some men didn’t want a Father’s Day. Some saw it as a manufactured holiday, invented for the sole purpose of a commercial gimmick, and since many fathers were the sole breadwinners at the time, they didn’t particularly want to spend their hard-earned cash on gifts.
The Great Depression and World War II helped to boost the idea of Father’s Day. Struggling retailers marketed 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 P.L. 92-278, in 1972, making Father’s Day a federal holiday, it had already become a national institution.
On Sunday June 18th, gather the family to celebrate and remember your fathers and how much they have meant in your life, and make room for those neckties and #1 Dad/Grandad mugs from children and grandchildren.