Home
YOUR SPACE
Father's Day |
Father's Day
Give your Dad 'A Report Card' | Song
Lyrics 'My Daddy is the Best'
Dad 'Role Model
Mrs. John B. Dodd, of Washington, first proposed the idea of a "father's day" in 1909. Mrs. Dodd wanted a special day to honor her father, William Smart. William Smart, a Civil War veteran, was widowed when his wife (Mrs. Dodd's mother) died in childbirth with their sixth child. Mr. Smart was left to raise the newborn and his other five children by himself on a rural farm in eastern Washington state. It was after Mrs. Dodd became an adult that she realized the strength and selflessness her father had shown in raising his children as a single parent.
The first Father's Day was observed on June 19, 1910 in Spokane Washington. At about the same time in various towns and cities across American other people were beginning to celebrate a "father's day." In 1924 President Calvin Coolidge supported the idea of a national Father's Day. Finally in 1966 President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the 3rd Sunday of June as Father's Day.
Father's Day, contrary to popular misconception, was not established as a holiday in order to help greeting card manufacturers sell more cards. In fact when a "father's day" was first proposed there were no Father's Day cards! Father's Day has become a day to not only honor your father, but all men who act as a father figure. Stepfathers, uncles, grandfathers, and adult male friends are all be honored on Father's Day.
FATHER’S DAY QUOTES
"None of you can ever be proud enough of being the child of such a Father who has not his equal in this world-so great, so good, so faultless. Try, all of you, to follow in his footsteps and don't be discouraged, for to be really in everything like him none of you, I am sure, will ever be. Try, therefore, to be like him in some points, and you will have acquired a great deal." -- Victoria, Queen of England |
"That is the thankless position of the father in the family-the provider for all, and the enemy of all." -- J. August Strindberg |
"It is a wise father that knows his own child." -- William Shakespeare |
"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was." -- Anne Sexton |
"One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters." -- English Proverb |
"To be a successful father . . . there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years." -- Ernest Hemingway |
"A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father." -- Gabriel García Márquez |
"I
cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's
protection." -- Sigmund Freud |
"I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example." -- Mario Cuomo |
"Be
kind to thy father, for when thou wert young, |
"Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father!" -- Lydia M. Child |
