HAPPY FATHER’S DAY: A Day Rooted in Love and Sacrifice

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY! This is the day to celebrate our fathers. The true men who have been there for their wife and children. The men who are making a difference in their children's and the community's lives.

In the United States the first event recorded in honor of fathers was held on July 5, 1908, in a West Virginia church to honor the hundreds of men who died in a coal mine explosion.  It was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday.

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The next year, Sonora Smart Dodd, the daughter of a widower who raised his six children as a single dad in Spokane, Washington, began to work for the equivalent of Mother’s Day for male parents.  With the help of local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers and government officials she worked to generate support for her idea. Her effort was successful when Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on June 19, 1910.

The movement for Father’s Day was honored by President Wilson in 1816 when from Washington, DC he pressed a button to telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane.   By 1924, President Calvin Cooledge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day.

In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring that the third Sunday of June 1966 to be recognized as Father’s Day. It would take six more years before President Richard Nixon established Father’s Day as a permanent national holiday to be observed on the third Sunday of June every year.

Today fathers are recognized for their love, guidance and willingness to be involved in their children's lives.

The downside is too many fathers are not living up to their responsibility. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, approximately 1 in 4 children currently live without a biological father in the household. Now, that doesn't mean they all walked away, many have passed away. But the census shows as many as 18 million children are living in single parent households or are being raised by other relatives.

Now experts emphasize a physical absence doesn't equal abandonment. Many fathers fight to remain in their children's lives despite a parental split.

On this Father's Day less pay our respects to fathers who have assumed their proper role in their children's lives and thank them for guidance, love and support.

For those of us whose fathers have passed on, it is still Happy Father's Day for the positive influence you have had in our lives.

Happy Father's Day Dad!!