CELEBRATIONS

The Complete Book of American Holidays     By ROBERT J. MYERS with The Editors of Hallmark Cards     Illustrations by BILL GREER       DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, Inc. Garden City, New York

EJEMPLAR EN INGLES Recopilación de estos datos Señor Adolfo Evaristo NEGRO, Suboficial Mayor (R) FAA Juan Carlos LUJÁN, Fabián Ignacio LUJÁN info@marambio.aq - www.marambio.aq

Father’s Day

When observed: Third Sunday in June. Earliest observance: July 5, 1908, Fairmont, West Virginia M odern America appears to be unique in its honoring of fathers on a special day. The observance mos similar to our Father’s Day was the ancient Roman Parentalia, which lasted from the thirteenth of Febraury to the twenty-second. This festival, however, was not for living fathers, but was rather a time of remembrance, commemorating departed parents and kinksfolk. The ceremonies were held, Ovid says, to “appease the souls of your own fathers.” This annual observance became a family reunion. Members offered wine, milk, honey, oil, and water at the flower-decorated graves. At the concluding ceremony, known as Caristia, much celebrating went on as the living relatives feasted together, having been cleansed by the performance of their duties to the dead.

Father’s Day for us, of course, is not intended for honoring the dead. We may pay a minor symbolic tribute by wearing a white rose; but far fewer of these are seen than white carnations at Mother’s Day.

A number of persons have unconnectedly figured in the growth of Father’s Day. The earliest mention we have of a day for fathers is July 5, 1908, when a Father’s Day service was held in the Central Church of Fairmont, West Virginia, by Dr. Robert T. Webb a the request of Mrs. Charles Clayton.

In 1912, at the suggestion of the Reverend J. H. Berringer, pastor of the Irvington Methodist Church, the people of Vancouver, Washington, conducted a celebration. They believed it to be the first such ceremony.

An important figure in the “honor fathers” movement was Harry C. Meek, past president of the Uptown Lions Club of Chicago who said that he first had the idea for Father’s Day in 1915. He began to suggest it in speeches before various Lions, and the notion took hold. Members set the date for Father’s Day on the third Sunday in June, the Sunday nearest Meek’s birthday. The Lions crowned him “Originator of Father’s Day”.

Mrs. John Bruce Dodd

FATHER’S DAY’S most influential promoter was Mrs. John Bruce Dodd of Spokane, Washington. The idea of a Father’s Day celebration came to her first while listening to a sermon on Mother’s Day in 1909. Her own father, William Jackson Smart, had acomplished the amazing task of raising six children-Mrs. Dodd and her five brothers-after his wife died at an early age. The sacrifices of her father on their eastern Washington farm called to mind the unsung feats of fathers everywhere.

With the support of her minister, Dr. Rasmus, she composed a letter to the Reverend Conrad Bluhm, president of the Spokane Ministerial Association, in which she set forth her proposal for Father’s Day. The association approved of the idea, and the Spokane YMCA agreed to publicize it. Thus Spokane, in 1910, was the first city to honor fathers with a special day.

The day chosen by Mrs. Dodd was June 5, her father’s birthday. However, because this did not allow sufficient time for the ministers to prepare sermons, the first Spokane Father’s Day actually took place on the nineteenth-the third Sunday in june. The mayor of Spokane issued a Father’s Day Proclamation and the governor, M. E. Hay, set the date for an observance throughout the state. Mrs. Dodd’s suggestions for observing the day included wearing a flower-a red rose to indicate a living father and a white rose for a dead one. In Vancouver the flower selected was a white lilac backed by a green leaf. An unusual choice was the flower worn by the members of the Martin W. Callener Bible Class of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1924. They adorned themselves wth dandelions and, whether or not it was their idea of fatherhood, they defended their selection by saying “the more it is trampled on the more it grows.”

Mrs. John Bruce Dodd

THE NEWSPAPERS carried stories and articles about the Spokane observance and interest in Father’s Day increased. President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 co-operated in a Father’s Day celebration by pressing a button in hiw Washington office which unfurled a flag in Spokane. Then in 1924 Father’s Day received the support of President Calvin Coolidge who, while refusing Harry Meek’s request to have the day proclamed as Mother’s Day was in 1914, recommended that the day be noted in all states. He wrote to Mr. Meek that “the widespread observance of this occasion is calculated to establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children, and also to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.”

Two other early attempts to formalize the day were the resolutions introduced into the House of Representatives by Hampton J. Moore of Philadelphia and Bertrand H. Snell of New York. Neither resolution passed.

The most notable effort to have Father’s Day officially recognized was made by Senator Margaret Chase Smith on february 18, 1957. Her proposal read, in part:

As far as I can gather, it seems that the Congress has been guilty now for forty years of the worst possible oversight, to say the least, perpetrated against the gallant fathers, young and old, of our land.

As a daughter, as a woman, and as a United States Senator, I must say as strongly as I know how, that the conduct of the Congress in this regard should cause us to hide our faces in shame. And here is why:

Either we honor both our parent, mother and father, or let us desist from honoring either one. But to single out just one of our two parents and omit the other is the most grievous insult imaginable.

In 1972 the day finally was established permanently when President Richard Nixon signed a Congressional resolution. His action eliminated the need for an annual designation and put Father’s Day on the same continuing basis as Mother’s Day. Giving gifts has become natural part of the occasion, and greetings for fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, sons, other relatives, and friends are widely sent. Father’s Day has become another happy occasion for family dinners and gatherings.

National Father’s Day Committee

THE NAME “National Father’s Day Association” was registered with the United States Patent Offcie in 1932 by Mrs. Walter H. Burgess, who had been instrumental in having the governor of Virginia proclaim a Father’s Day in 1921. Mrs. Burgess is said not to have known of Mrs. Dodd’s work with the observance, but upon learning of it, she apparently dropped and claims she might have had to the establishment of the day.

In 1926 the National Father’s Day Committee was formed in New York City, and it has actively promoted the cause of Father’s Day. Since 1942 the committee has been selecting a Father of the Year “based on outstanding achievement.” The award has gone to Dr. Ralph Bunche, General Douglas MacArthur, and Presidents Eisenhower and Truman, among others.