Father’s Day is a quintessential American holiday: the day we honor dads, stepdads, granddads, and father figures who mean so much—in so many ways—to our families. On the third Sunday in June, fathers revel in their very own dedicated day and, if they’re lucky, are showered by their kids and family members with love, appreciation, attention, and gifts.
It’s also when we extol the importance of fatherhood.
But did you know that this special day has been celebrated even before it became a national holiday? It’s a 113-year-old story.
Father’s Day as we know it today originated in Spokane, Washington. The idea was initiated by a devoted daughter of a Civil War-era widowed father. Her name was Sonora Smart Dodd.
According to Megan Duvall, the historic preservation officer for the city and county of Spokane, Dodd’s mother Ellen had died in childbirth when Dodd was just a teenager. Her father, William Jackson Smart, was left to raise six kids, ranging in age from 16 to a newborn, on his own.
William was a farmer who had fought for the Union during the Civil War, Duvall said. By all accounts, he was a stoic symbol of what fatherhood—parenthood—should be. His daughter wanted desperately to pay tribute to him and other fathers.
A Daughter’s Devotion
According to historical accounts, it all began when Sonora was listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in the Central Methodist Episcopal Church in Spokane, Washington, on May 9, 1909. Sonora questioned why we shouldn’t have a like-minded Father’s Day as well. Mother’s Day had originated two years before in Grafton, West Virginia, but nothing similar had since been created for fathers.
Over the next year, Dodd tirelessly drummed up support for her idea of a Father’s Day, Duvall explained. She convinced the local YMCA and the Spokane Ministerial Association to sign a petition creating a Father’s Day observance in Spokane. Local businesses, the press, and Mayor N.S. Pratt all gave their support.
In her original petition to the Ministerial Alliance of Spokane, Dodd wrote:
The beautiful custom of Mother’s Day suggests the question. Why not a Father’s Day? This question is further emphasized by the celebration in our Sunday schools of Children’s Day.
A Father’s Day would call attention to such constructive teachings from the pulpit which would naturally point out:
Dodd’s petition was soon signed by the Spokane Ministerial Alliance and the mayor. Thanks to the notoriety, Duvall said, various Washington towns even vowed to hold their own events. The day was set: June 19, 1910.
On the days leading up to the event, The Spokane Press said this of Dodd on June 6:
She wishes this idea to take root and to sprout in the hearts of the people of our country. The object of this day, she says, is to bring other [sic] father and child, and to give to the head of the house and the earner of the daily bread for his brood all respect and honor due him. It is also the aim of this day to instill the same love and reverence for the father as is the mother’s portion.
On June 19, 1910, the Protestant churches of Spokane observed Spokane’s first Father’s Day. Ministers delivered fatherhood-themed sermons, and special recognitions were bestowed. The Rev. Robert Asa Smith delivered a Father’s Day sermon at his Spokane church, part of which was excerpted in the Spokane Spokesman-Review:
I believe men would be better if they were loved more. It is good to honor the mothers, because they are the best blessing that has been given to us, but that is no reason why we should not reverence another gift of hardly less value, the fathers. God said, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother.’ The one is equal to the other.
We have talked and written so much about mother that we have almost overlooked the fact that there is also a beauty of fatherhood. We have placed a halo about mother’s head, but the father’s head never had a halo and no one seems to have missed it. Not a word would I take from mother’s praise, but I would add to fathers.
I call upon you this morning to honor a father’s devotion, a father’s protection and a father’s love.
The celebrations were a state and local hit. After the first event, Dodd spoke to the Spokane Spokesman-Review: “I wish to thank the people of Spokane who have indorsed ‘Father’s Day’ by wearing a rose, placing cards in their store windows and preaching as a representative theme,” she said. “I have received clippings from all parts of the state concerning the day and one Japanese and one German paper give liberal space to stories concerning the observance. The Swedish, Scandinavian and Danish people have also indorsed the day.”
Challenges Ahead
Over the next several years, Dodd tried furiously to take the observance nationwide. Support ebbed and flowed as many people felt the holiday was a ploy to commercialize another holiday. Others, like the governor, felt men didn’t need such flattering.
That reluctance was apparent in a letter the governor wrote to Dodd in July 1910, which read, in part:
Ever since I read about it in the papers, I have rather anticipated that this office would be asked to take cognizance of it. While, of course, I do not disapprove of the movement in any way, still I feel that Mother’s Day is the more important of the two and that we fathers can scratch along some way or other without having such a flattering mention made of us. We men are somewhat bashful and might feel much embarrassed were we to receive so much public adoration. Yours very respectfully, M.E. Hay, Governor
Still, Dodd plugged away.
“In trying to get the idea off the ground, she actually used local businesses to help spur support to honor fathers,” said Duvall. “She targeted menswear companies, whiskey makers, and car companies, to name a few. It slowly caught on.” But Dodd had other projects in her life as well. Before long, she’d left Spokane.
“She was a busy woman,” Duvall said. “She soon went off to the Art Institute of Chicago to study art. She became a poet. She painted and became a fashion designer.”
It wasn’t until she returned to Spokane in the 1930s that Dodd restarted the campaign to make Father’s Day a national holiday. While she had been gone, more and more towns across America were honoring Father’s Day, but never to the extent of Mother’s Day, Duvall said. But Dodd kept doggedly pushing.
Over the years, the idea spread, and people lobbied Congress to establish the holiday, according to the Library of Congress. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson approved the idea, but he never signed a proclamation for it. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge made it a national event to “establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.”
But it wasn’t until 1966 that President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation giving official national recognition “to this well-established tradition.” He wrote: “If the father’s responsibilities are many, his rewards are also great—the love, appreciation, and respect of children and spouse.”
Finally, in 1972, President Richard Nixon made Father’s Day a permanent, national holiday by signing it into law. “To have a father—to be a father—is to come very near the heart of life itself,” Nixon wrote. Six years later, Duvall said, Sonora died at age 96, happy that her lifelong quest had been achieved.
“She was an incredibly accomplished woman,” Duvall said.
This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.
