The first formal "Father's Day" was celebrated JUNE 19, 1910, in Spokane, Washington.
Sonora
Louise Smart Dodd heard a church sermon on the newly established
Mother's Day and wanted to honor her father, Civil War veteran William
Jackson Smart, who had raised six children by himself after his wife
died in childbirth.
Sonora drew up a petition supported by the Young Men's Christian Association and the ministers of Spokane.
In
1916, Woodrow Wilson spoke at a Spokane Fathers' Day service.
President Nixon, in 1972, established Father's Day as a permanent
national observance.
On Tuesday, December 6, 1904, in his Fourth Annual Message to Congress, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
"No
Christian and civilized community can afford to show a happy-go-lucky
lack of concern for the youth of to-day; for, if so, the community will
have to pay a terrible penalty of financial burden and social
degradation in the to-morrow....
The
prime duty of the man is to work, to be the breadwinner; the prime
duty of the woman is to be the mother, the housewife. All questions of
tariff and finance sink into utter insignificance when compared with
the tremendous, the vital importance of trying to shape conditions so
that these two duties of the man and of the woman can be fulfilled
under reasonably favorable circumstances."
On May 20, 1981, in a Proclamation of Father's Day, President Ronald Reagan stated:
"'Train
up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not
depart from it,' Solomon tells us. Clearly, the future is in the care
of our parents. Such is the responsibility, promise, and hope of
fatherhood. Such is the gift that our fathers give us."
On Father's Day, 1988, Ronald Reagan said:
"Children,
vulnerable and dependent, desperately need security, and it has ever
been a duty and a joy of fatherhood to offer it.
Being
a father requires strength...and more than a little courage...to
persevere, to fight discouragement, and to keep working for the
family."
Reagan continued:
"With
God's grace, fathers find the patience to teach, the fortitude to
provide, the compassion to comfort, and the mercy to forgive.
All of this is to say that they find the strength to love their wives and children selflessly."
President Reagan ended:
"Let us...express our thanks and affection to our fathers, whether we can do so in person or in prayer."
Williams
Jennings Bryan gave over 600 public speeches during his Presidential
campaigns, with his most famous being "The Prince of Peace," which was
printed in the New York Times, September 7, 1913:
"Christ
promoted peace by giving us assurance that a line of communication
can be established between the Father above and the child below."
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