Honoring Fathers

The first reported “Father’s Day” in the U.S. was observed on June 13, 1910, according to Wikipedia, which offers the following information:

Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, heard in 1909 a sermon about the newly recognized Mother’s Day while she sat in Spokane’s Central Methodist Episcopal Church. She felt fatherhood needed recognition, too, and wanted to honor fathers like her father, William Smart, a Civil War veteran who raised his family alone on a rural farm in the state of Washington after his wife died giving birth to their sixth child.

Dodd enlisted Spokane Ministerial Association help in 1909 and arranged for the celebration of fatherhood in that city. On June 19, 1910, young members of the YMCA went to church wearing roses – a red rose to honor a living father and a white rose to honor a deceased father. Dodd traveled through the city in a horse-drawn carriage, carrying gifts to shut-in fathers.

In spite of support from the YWCA and churches, Father’s Day ran the risk of disappearing from the calendar. Mother’s Day was met with enthusiasm, but Father’s Day was often met with laughter. The holiday slowly gathered attention – but for the wrong reasons. It was the target of much satire, parody and derision, including jokes from the local Spokesman-Review newspaper. Many people saw it as the first step in filling the calendar with mindless promotions.

A bill to give national recognition to the holiday was introduced in Congress in 1913. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson traveled to Spokane to speak in a Father’s Day celebration and wanted to make it official, but Congress resisted, fearing it would become commercialized. President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the U.S. observe the day but stopped short of issuing a national proclamation. Two earlier attempts to formally recognize the holiday had been defeated by Congress. In 1957, Maine’s Senator Margaret Chase Smith wrote a proposal accusing Congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years while honoring mothers. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers by designating the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. In 1972, President Richard Nixon made the day a permanent, legal and official national holiday.

Here are some quotes about fathers:

“A father is a fellow who has replaced the currency in his wallet with the snapshots of his kids,” someone said.

“My father was often angry when I was most like him,” said playwright Lillian Hellman.

American professional baseball player Harmon Killebrew said, “My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, “You’re tearing up the grass.” Dad would reply, “We’re not raising grass. We’re raising boys.”

“The Christian father is really an instrument in God's hand,” someone said.

“No father is perfect, except “our Father who art in heaven,” a writer noted.

While his children were still young, Robert E. Lee, a West Point graduate who later led the Confederate Army during the U.S. Civil War, reportedly went walking one morning. Snow had fallen the night before. As Lee walked, he heard faint, small footsteps behind him. Looking back, he found Custis, his little boy, walking in the tracks Lee made in the snow. The boy struggled to put his feet in the exact footprints left by his father.

“When I saw this,” Lee told a friend, “I said to myself, ‘It behooves me to walk very straight when this fellow is already following in my tracks.’”

Someone said a “Father’s Orders” are given in Deuteronomy 6:4-9: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.”