Tannishblog

We fathers have a woman to thank for this day - no different than any other day.

A recent addition to our history, Fathers Day began in 1909, in Spokane, Washington, as Sonora Smart Dodd thought of a day to honor her father William Jackson Smart, a civil war veteran widowed during the birth of his sixth child. He raised them all on the family farm. As a result of Sonora’s efforts, the first Fathers Day was held in Spokane in June, 1910, the month of Mr. Smart’s birth.

In 1924 President Calvin Coolidge supported a proposal for a national Fathers Day dads waited until recently the day became a holiday. During the same decade, Harry C. Meek, president of the Lions Club in Chicago, gave several speeches around the United States expressing the need for a day to honor our fathers. In 1920 the Lions Clubs of America presented him with a gold watch, with the inscription “Originator of Fathers’ Day”. Later, by some accounts, President Lyndon Johnson made the third Sunday in June, 1966 the official observance; other accounts site the induction of Fathers Day in 1972 by President Richard Nixon.

Somewhere between 57 and 63 years in the making, Fathers Day is a recent tradition. Enjoy it! As mothers rightfully get much of the credit for child rearing, the man who quietly supports his woman in that most important endeavor should be acknowledged. In many ways, his job is equally challenging. As is said: Any man can be a father; it takes a special man to be a dad.

As for me, I get to support my daughter in her tenth annual marathon Dance Recital Weekend. Fathers Day weekend, for me, is a chance to ogle sexy, young women shaking their midsections at me in real time - for two days. And this is not just socially acceptable in this context, but sanctioned by my wife! What red-blooded American dad would complain about that? I have a woman to thank for my holiday tradition, too.