Father’s Day is a few weeks away. It is just as important to honor fathers, as it is to honor mothers. That’s what Sonora Smith Dodd believed, and that’s how she came up with the concept of having a special day for honoring fathers. On Mother’s Day, 1908, Mrs. Dodd, who was a married woman with children of her own, sat in church at Central United Methodist Church in Spokane, Washington, as the pastor delivered a Mother’s Day Sermon.
Mrs. Dodds wanted to honor her father because he had raised six children as a single parent after his wife died while giving birth to their sixth child, a son. The family lived on a farm in a remote part of eastern Washington. Her idea began as a desire to show her own father how much she appreciated him for all he had done as a single parent raising five sons and a daughter, while still managing to run a farm and do everything else that was expected of him as both a farmer and father.
Dodds wanted the first Father’s Day celebration to coincide with her father’s birthday on June 5, 1908, but the people who were helping her plan the event convinced her that there wouldn’t be enough time to plan an appropriate celebration, so the festivities were scheduled for June 19, 1908, and it was held at the Spokane YMCA.
Spice Jar Terrarium
Another Father’s Day observance was held across the country on July 5, 1908, at Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South, in Fairmount, West Virginia. Grace Golden Clayton had asked the pastor of that church, to celebrate fathers, but she especially wanted to honor the 361 men who had died in a mine explosion that occurred in a nearby town, a few months earlier. Those 361 men included many recent Italian immigrants and fathers, and she believed they deserved some recognition.
It wasn’t until President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a decree in 1966, making the third Sunday of every June, the date of annual Father’s Day observances that Father’s Day was officially celebrated on that date. In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon signed a congressional bill that made Father’s Day an official national holiday.
We’ve come up with an idea to inspire your Father’s Day gift giving this year. Forget about ties, shirts, or tools. Get creative and give Dad something that he can look at and remember that you gave it to him on his special day.
Our 13” Spice Jar Terrarium will look fantastic on dad’s desk – either at home, at the office, or on a table in his special “man cave.” We fill it with different foliage plants and ferns, all of which contribute to a unique tabletop eco-system.
