Honoring Our Fathers
Father’s Day is an important holiday and celebration in America, but it wasn’t always recognized as such. While Mother’s Day took only six years to become a permanent national holiday, Father’s Day had to wait six decades. Father’s Day in the United States originated in 1909 when Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington was listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in church. The sermon got her thinking about her father, a civil war veteran who was left to raise a family of six alone after his wife died in childbirth. Dodd wanted a day to honor her father and all fathers who had worked hard to become symbols of courage and leadership to their children.
On June 19, 1910, her father’s birthday, with the help of the Spokane Ministerial Association and the YMCA, Dodd hosted the first Father’s Day celebration. Young members of the YMCA went to church wearing roses—a red rose to honor a living father and a white rose to honor a deceased one—and Dodd traveled through the city carrying gifts to shut-in fathers.
Though support of a national holiday honoring fathers was growing, it faced resistance and criticism from newspapers, politicians and other critics. The fear was that Father’s Day was the first step toward purely commercialist holidays, filling the calendar with meaningless days of merchandising and mindless promotions. Attempts to formalize the day were resisted and defeated in Congress. Though President Woodrow Wilson visited Spokane to speak in a Father’s Day celebration in 1919 and recommended that the day be observed by the nation in 1924, even he fell short of issuing a national proclamation.
The day finally found a new voice in Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who openly advocated for the holiday and in 1957 wrote a strongly-worded proposal in Congress that accused the legislative body of ignoring fathers by honoring mothers on Mother’s Day yet doing nothing for fathers. Finally in 1966, President Lyndon Johnson issued a national proclamation that the United States would observe Father’s Day every year on the third Sunday in June. Father’s Day finally became a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.
Though it may not have received the same attention as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day has evolved into an important national holiday. It is a time where we can honor our fathers for the physical, emotional and financial support they work tirelessly to provide for their families. Mothers are viewed as symbols of love and kindness, and fathers are symbols of strength and courage. Father’s Day is also a day for father figures— uncles, grandfathers, teachers and mentors who step up and inspire their children and students to become strong, steadfast leaders.
So this Father’s Day weekend, NPTA would like to thank all the pharmacy technician fathers and father figures for their hard work, wisdom, encouragement and unconditional love. Use Facebook, Twitter and the comments section of this blog to send your father messages of love and support. Three cheers for Dad, and a happy Father’s Day to you all!