One hundred and seven years ago Sonora Louise Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington wanted to honor her dad. Her mother had died in childbirth leaving her husband, a farmer, and Civil War vet, alone to raise a newborn and five children.
Sonora, age 27, thought of the idea after sitting in church during a Mother’s Day celebration. Mother’s Day began in 1908, and Congress made it an official day to remember in 1914. Father’s Day took much longer to catch on.
Sonora, the only girl in her family and a mother of a son herself, approached the Ministerial Association and the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) about establishing a day to honor fathers. She also petitioned the city to celebrate Father’s Day on June 5, her dad’s birthday. The mayor of Spokane pushed the date back two weeks to give the city time to prepare for festivities, and on June 19, 1910, Father’s Day was born.
President Woodrow Wilson approved Father’s Day in 1916. President Calvin Coolidge said he supported Father’s Day in 1924, but didn’t issue a national proclaimation, and it wasn’t recognized nationally until 1966 when President Lyndon B. Johnson declared June 19 to be Father’s Day. And it didn’t become a permanent national holiday until 1972 when President Richard Nixon signed it into law.
As for Sonora’s father, William Smart died in 1919, and even though it wasn’t a national day of celebration, the day had caught on around the country.
Today Father’s Day is celebrated in over 30 countries around the world.
Dodd died in 1978 at the age of 96. In Spokane, there is a monument to mark Dodd’s accomplishments to society at the YMCA.
So what does Father’s Day mean to me? Growing up as the son of a hard-working lumberjack was noteworthy on many counts. My father loved to work hard, and he enjoyed it when his four sons put their backs into whatever task they were assigned and didn’t complain. Complaining never got us out of work, although occasionally it was attempted.
When I was age three or four, I would get up early and listen to the radio with my dad while he got ready for his day. He got up at 4:30 a.m. and he would spend about half an hour getting ready to head out to whatever part of the forest he was logging in. He wouldn’t get back until 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., so I suppose I was up early to get some one-on-one time with him.
When I was 12, I spent my first summer working in the woods. It was my last year of Little League, but work was deemed more important. I was paid two dollars a day to hold a measuring stick and help buck pulpwood on the landing. Sometimes we would go into the woods and dad would cut trees and then we would cord the wood up for the skidders to take out to the landing. I would carry his gas and oil, the eight-foot long measuring stick and two picaroons. The gas and oil were in one-gallon white (bleach) jugs secured together with a six-to-12-inch piece of thin rope to make them easier to carry. Before falling timber my father would cut two push poles we would use to make sure the trees fell in the right direction. It was important to line the butts of the trees up for the guys who would skid the wood.
In tenth grade, I got the big idea to have the school open the gym at night, so my buddies and I could play basketball. It wasn’t an easy process, and it involved meeting with the principal, superintendent, and attending a couple of dreadfully boring school board meetings so I could plead my case. I finally wore everyone down, and the gym was opened with one caveat, an adult had to be there to watch us play hoops. I volunteered my father, and he was paid one dollar a year to read a newspaper and watch us play ball a couple of nights a week. He never complained, but he must have been tired. He worked at a fantastic pace in the woods.
During the high school track season, my parents would come to all of the track meets and cheer on the CCHS athletes. By today’s standards, we were lightly trained and ran only in season. But we took 11 kids to state when I was a junior, a great result for a small school.
Going into my senior year, I took my yearly physical so that I could play sports. During the physical Dr. MacDonald said he had only heard one heart beat like mine. My pulse was 36 beats per minute. “Who was that?” I asked. “Your father,” he answered with a smile.
My dad passed away in 2006 from Alzheimer’s on his 78th birthday. I miss him every day, but more on Father’s Day.
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