President Nixon Made Father’s Day A National Holiday In 1972 – Over 50 Years After Mother’s Day

Father’s Day is observed annually on the third Sunday in June.  This day is set aside to honor the role that fathers play in the family structure and society.

After the success of Mother’s Day, Father’s Day observances began to appear.  The road to this national observance was not easy.

• 1907 – The first recorded celebration of Father’s Day happened after the Monograph Mining Disaster, (Monograph, W.Va) which killed 361 men and left around 1,000 children fatherless in December 1907.  Grace Golden Clayton suggested to her pastor Robert Thomas Webb a day honoring all those fathers.
• On July 5th, 1908, a gathering in honor of these men took place at Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South, now known as Central United Methodist Church, in Fairmont, West Virginia.
• 1910 – the YMCA in Spokane, Washington recruited several clergymen with the help of Sonora Smart Dodd to honor fathers throughout the city.  The date was set for June 5th but was later changed to June 19th (the 3rd Sunday in June) as many clergymen needed more time to prepare.
• 1910 – Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington organizes the first Father’s Day celebration on her own father’s birthday.
• 1912 – Halsey Taylor invented the drinking fountain in 1912 as a tribute to his father, who succumbed to typhoid fever after drinking from a contaminated public water supply in 1896.
• 1915 – Harry C. Meek, a member of Lions Clubs International, claimed that he first had the idea for Father’s Day in 1915.  Meek argued that the third Sunday of June was chosen because it was his birthday.  The Lions Club has named him “Originator of Father’s Day.”  Meek made many efforts to promote Father’s Day and make it an official holiday.
• 1916 – After a visit to Spokane in 1916 to speak at a Father’s Day celebration, President Woodrow Wilson wanted to make it official, but Congress resisted fearing that the observance would become too commercialized.
• 1924 – President Calvin Coolidge stopped short of issuing a national proclamation in 1924
• 1938 – Sonora Smart Dodd continued to work to make Father’s Day a national observance.  In 1938, she collaborated with the Father’s Day Council, a group of New York Men’s Wear Retailers for the commercial promotion of the observance.  Many Americans resisted the holiday for decades because of these attempts to commercialize the day.
  • Sonora Smart 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.”
• 1966 – President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers on the third Sunday in June.
• 1967 – The only father-daughter collaboration to hit the top spot on the Billboard Pop Music chart was the 1967 hit single “Something Stupid” by Frank & Nancy Sinatra.
• 1972 – President Richard Nixon signed into law a permanent national holiday in 1972 over 50 years after Mother’s Day came into existence.
• 2011 – There are 176,000 stay-at-home dads caring for 32,000 children.
• There are an estimated 72 million fathers across the nation.
• 29 million of those fathers also being grandfathers.
• Two million fathers are single.
• Father’s Day is the fourth-biggest day for sending greeting cards, after Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, according to the Greeting Card Association.
• Spending on Father’s Day (2015) will reach about $12.7 billion this year, with the average person spending about $115.57 on presents. That’s about $2 more than last year’s average.
• The amount spent on Father’s Day is still less than what Americans spend on Mother’s Day — $21 billion.
• George Washington, the celebrated father of our country, had no children of his own. A 2004 study suggested that a type of tuberculosis that Washington contracted in childhood may have rendered him sterile. He did adopt the two children from Martha Custis’s first marriage.
• The Stevie Wonder song “Isn’t She Lovely” is about his newborn daughter, Aisha. If you listen closely, you can hear Aisha crying during the song.
• Father’s Day was the busiest day of the year for collect phone calls.
• More than one-third of Father’s Day cards are funny in nature.
• Female shoppers spend 50% more than men on gifts for their dads.
• Five inspirational quotes for Father’s Day
  • “A father is neither an anchor to hold us back, nor a sail to take us there, but a guiding light whose love shows us the way.” – Unknown
  • “Any man can be a father, it takes someone special to be a Dad.” – Anne Geddes
  • “My Father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived and let me watch him do it.” – Clarence Budington Kelland
  • “Dads are most ordinary men turned by love into heroes, adventurers, story-tellers, and singers of song.” – Pam Brown
  • “A Father is someone you look up to no matter how tall you grow.” – Unknown
• By the numbers:
  • $14 billion – the money spent on Father’s Day gifts in America in 2016.
  • 34% – the percentage of Father’s Day shoppers who buy their dad a gift online.
  • $160 – the amount millennials spent on average on Father’s Day gifts in 2015.
  • $17 billion – the spending on Father’s Day in 2020.
  • 75% – the percentage of people who celebrated Father’s Day in 2020.
  • 37% – the percentage of dads who say they want gift cards for Father’s Day.
  • 87 million – the number of greeting cards sold for Father’s Day.
  • 4th – the ranking of Father’s Day as the largest card-sending occasion.
  • 50% – the percentage of all Father’s Day cards that are purchased for fathers — the rest are for husbands, grandfathers, sons, brothers, etc.
  • 20% – the percentage of all Father’s Day cards bought by wives for their husbands.

Sources:

National Day Calendar

U.S. Census

IBTimes

Mental Floss

Mix929

The Holiday Spot

National Today