Today is Father’s Day. The idea for the enduring holiday originated with Sonora Louise Smart Dodd as a tribute to her father, a widowed Civil War veteran who raised six children on his own. As a result of her efforts, Father’s Day was observed in Spokane, Wash., on June 19, 1910. By 1911, the occasion was celebrated in San Diego nearly 3,000 cities and towns across the United States. Dodd lived to see Father’s Day declared a national holiday in 1972.
From the San Diego Union, Sunday, June 18, 1950:
Father’s Day, 40 Years Old, Began As Daughter’s Tribute to Her Dad
SPOKANE, Wash., June 17 (AP)—Sunday is the 40th anniversary of Father’s Day.
To Mrs. John Bruce Dodd the widespread observance of the occasion is “beyond the broadest hopes” she had when Spokane City council first indorsed her request for such a day in 1910.
Mrs. Dodd, a Spokane mother who still takes an active part in civic affairs, founded the “Day” as a tribute to her own devoted father.
The idea for a Father’s Day, she recalls, had its roots in a modest farm house in the rolling Big Bend hills of eastern Washington on a cold March night in the late 1890s.
It was the home of William Jackson Smart, a quiet, hardworking family man who had moved west after the crops failed on his Arkansas farm.
HEARTACHE STRIKES
This night he struggled with his biggest heartache. He had just returned from his wife’s funeral and was trying to explain the tragedy to six small children who asked when mother would be back.
From that moment Billy Smart became both mother and father to his family.
In the hard years that followed, he did his job well.
When his daughter Sonora married John Bruce Dodd, a Spokane business man, Billy Smart had reared six motherless children to adulthood.
Mrs. Dodd conceived her idea while listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909 at Spokane Central Methodist Church. When it was over she went to the pastor, Dr. Henry Rasmus, and asked:
“I liked everything you said about motherhood, but don’t you think father should have a special day, too?”
PASTOR PROMISES AID
Dr. Rasmus promised to help Mrs. Dodd do something about a Father’s Day. all that year and into the next Mrs. Dodd gained local for her idea.
The next spring she presented a petition to the Spokane Ministerial Society asking that sermons be preached on fatherhood sometime in June, the month of her father’s birth.
The ministers went with her to the City council where they got a Father’s Day proclamation from the mayor. Then Gov. M.E. Hay proclaimed the third Sunday in June Father’s Day in the State of Washington.
Newspaper syndicates picked up the story and gave it wide circulation. At home, Mrs. Dodd worked on department store managers and asked for window displays. Most though it was a gag.
STORE SHOWS PICTURE
She did get sympathetic attention, however, from John Matthieson, who arranged in his store windows a picture of George Washington, the Father of our Country; an American Flag; and, a card that read simply: “ Father.”
When that first Father’s Day arrived on June 19, 1910, Mrs. Dodd sat in her pew at the Centenary Presbyterian Church here and heard Rev. Conrad Bluhm devote his sermon to Dad. He called it: “The Knighthood that Never Retreats.”
To Mrs. Dodd the title was most appropriate. Her own father, the inspiration of her plan, had never flinched in his duties. “He lived by the Golden Rule,” she said.
DEATH TAKES HUSBAND
Billy Smart died in 1919 at the age of 77. And, although he lived to see nine of them, he never mentioned Father’s Day in the presence of his daughter.
Her husband, who helped in the early campaign for a Father’s Day, died in 1945, the day their son, an Army captain, sailed overseas.
Mrs. Dodd is not overimpressed by the fact that she is recognized as the founder of the”Day.” She credits its success to “the worthiness of the subject” and the National Father’s Day Committee.
That’s the group in new York headed by Alvin Austin that picks the annual “Father of the Year”–Supreme court Justice William O. Douglas in 1950.
The committee was formed in 1936 to spread “The sentimental and spiritual observance” of the day throughout America.
Mrs. Dodd yearns for only one more thing before considering her work for Father’s Day complete. Someday she would like to see “a universal fraternity of fathers making a wall of fire around the world in defense of the home, the family and all the sons and daughters of the Eternal Father.”
