06/22/2026
FATHER’S DAY, A MINI-HISTORY
Yesterday, Sunday June 21, was Father’s Day. The history of Father's Day is more complicated than Mother's Day, taking 62 years and four U.S. Presidents to make it a national holiday.
The modern push for Father’s Day began in the early 20th century, largely inspired by the establishment of Mother’s Day 58 years earlier. Though there were earlier, isolated attempts to honor fathers—most notably a single, commemorative service held in Fairmont, West Virginia in 1908, to mourn the hundreds of men lost in a devastating mining disaster—the credit for campaigning for a permanent, national holiday goes almost entirely to one woman: Sonora Louise Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington.
Dodd, the daughter of Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, was raised alone by her father, along with her five younger brothers, after her mother died in childbirth. William Smart’s courageous and selfless dedication to raising his children inspired Sonora. In 1909, while listening to a sermon celebrating Mother’s Day, she realized fathers deserved a day of recognition as well.
She petitioned the Spokane Ministerial Alliance to establish a “Father’s Day,” initially proposing June 5th, her father's birthday. The local clergy agreed to the idea but requested more time to prepare their sermons, leading to the first official celebration being held on June 19, 1910, the third Sunday in June. This grassroots celebration was a success and began to spread across the country, often marked by the custom of wearing roses: red for a living father and white for a deceased father.
Despite popular support, the path to national recognition was fraught with skepticism. Many men initially resisted the idea, viewing the sentimental observance as an unwelcome attempt to domesticate masculinity, and others dismissed it as a purely commercial gimmick to sell gifts.
Nevertheless, support grew slowly but surely. President Woodrow Wilson, the president who declared Mother’s Day, honored Father’s Day in 1916, and President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s
Day in 1924. However, the holiday did not gain permanent federal recognition until nearly six decades after its first celebration. President Lyndon B. Johnson issued a presidential proclamation in 1966 officially designating the third Sunday of June as Father's Day. But it wasn’t until 1972, when President Richard Nixon officially establishing Father’s Day as a permanent national holiday in the United States, cementing Sonora Smart Dodd’s lifelong dedication.
