Father’s Day

20 June 2027

Father’s Day is the third Sunday in June, which in 2027 is 20 June. It took more than sixty years to become permanent, and one woman did most of the work.

Sonora Smart Dodd was 16 when her mother died in 1898, and her father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran, raised her and her five younger brothers in Spokane, Washington. In 1909 she listened to a Mother’s Day sermon and decided fathers should have a day too. She drafted a petition for a Sunday in June, intending her father’s birthday, 5 June. The Spokane Ministerial Alliance wanted more time to prepare sermons, so the first Father’s Day was held on 19 June 1910, the third Sunday of that month. Red roses were handed out in honour of living fathers and white ones for those who had died, and both the mayor of Spokane and the governor of Washington issued proclamations. The first written notice of the plan appeared in the Spokane Daily Chronicle on 6 June 1910.

After that the campaign stalled for decades. Woodrow Wilson helped Spokane mark the day in 1916 by sending telegraph signals to unfurl a flag there. Calvin Coolidge and Lyndon B. Johnson both spoke in favour. Congress passed a joint resolution in 1970, and in 1972 President Richard M. Nixon signed the measure that fixed the third Sunday in June as the permanent date. Dodd campaigned for the holiday for most of her life and lived to see it; she died in 1978, at 96.

Sources

• National Geographic, “Father’s Day: The history of the holiday — and the woman who founded it”
• The Spokesman-Review (Spokane), “A prime mover”, 19 June 2010
• Associated Press, “Father’s Day: Holiday’s female founder was a renegade”
• Timeanddate.com, “Holidays and Observances in the United States in 2027”

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