Origins of Father's Day

From an ACFC email, here. [As an aside, also therein mentioned was an article written by a young woman who blogged on the effects of feminism on society here.] Excerpt:

'Sunday is Father's Day.

Ever wonder how it began? Although many think it's a holiday made up by Hallmark, it actually has roots in Spokane, Washington dating back to 1909.

That's when 27-year-old Sonora Smart Dodd was listening to a Sunday church sermon about mothers and honoring them.

Dodd was just 16 hen her father, Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, was left to raise his six children alone after their mother died in childbirth.

Smart ran a farm in rural eastern Washington state.

After the sermon, Dodd began her campaign believing the entire nation should show more respect to fathers.

She persuaded the local ministerial association and YMCA to pass a resolution in support of Father's Day and the first local holiday was observed on June 19th, 1910.

June was picked because Dodd wanted to celebrate the holiday in the month her father was born.

States and organizations began lobbying Congress to declare an annual Father's Day and in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson approved the idea.

But it wasn't until 1924 when President Calvin Coolidge made it a national event, and until 1966 when President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June as Father's Day.'