* The first Father’s Day celebration was said to be on June 19, 1910 in Spokane, Washington.
* A woman named Sonora Smart Dodd spearheaded the efforts for fathers to be recognized after hearing a Mother’s Day sermon at her church. Dodd’s father, a Civil War veteran, had cared for the family after his wife died while giving birth to the couple’s sixth child.
* Dodd celebrated the first Father’s Day by delivering gifts to sick fathers all over Spokane.
* Woodrow Wilson wanted to participate in a Father’s Day ceremony in 1916 in Spokane, but Congress balked because Father’s Day had been the subject of editorial jokes in some newspapers and they didn’t want there to be accusations that the president was endorsing a commercial holiday.
* Many attempts to make Father’s Day an official holiday were shot down.
* In 1966, Lyndon Johnson finally made an official proclamation that Father’s Day would be recognized on the third Sunday of June.
* It wasn’t until 1972 that Father’s Day became a permanent national holiday. (President Nixon signed it into law.)
* Dodd correctly wrote the holiday in plural possessive form (Fathers’ Day), because it was “a day belonging to all fathers.” Somewhere along the way, the punctuation was changed and the day is widely written as “Father’s Day”.
* There are over 65 million fathers in the United States.
* Father’s Day is the fourth-largest greeting card occasion of the year.
* Father’s Day is the busiest day of the year for collect phone calls. ....."
