https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/India/father-s-day-2025-who-started-father-s-day-know-the-legacy-of-sonora-smart-dodd/ar-AA1GGQ8o?ocid=BingNewsSerpFather’s Day 2025: Who Started Father’s Day?
Know the Legacy of Sonora Smart Dodd
Father's Day originated in the early 20th century in America. Most people believe that the first Father's Day was celebrated in 1908 in West Virginia, following a devastating explosion in a coal mine that took the lives of numerous fathers. A church organized a memorial service to remember them, but this was not a recurring celebration.
The honor of inventing Father's Day as it is today belongs to Sonora Smart Dodd, a Spokane woman. In 1909, after listening to a sermon about Mother's Day, Sonora believed fathers deserved to have their own day as well. She wished to dedicate it to her own father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran who cared for six children on his own after his wife passed away at childbirth.
Sonora Louise Smart Dodd was born in 1882 in Arkansas. At the age of five, Sonora's family moved to Spokane, Washington. Her mother passed away when Sonora was 16, and her father alone raised all six children. Sonora loved her father so much because he was a tough, kind, and responsible father who held the family together under many trials.
She wed John Bruce Dodd in 1899 and had a son in 1909. Sonora was not only a good daughter and mother but also a community leader, poet, and artist. She struggled to make Father's Day a public holiday, feeling it was essential to express love and respect for the fathers.
Although observance of the holiday faded in the 1920s,over time, the idea of Father's Day became popular and embraced across the nation. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson sent a telegraph to Spokane praising Father's Day services. William Jennings Bryan was another early admirer of the observance.In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June as Father's Day. In 1972, President Nixon established a permanent national observance of Father's Day to be held on the 3rd Sunday of June each year.
Dodd was honored at Expo '74, the World's Fair, in Spokane in 1974. She died four years later at the age of ninety-six, and was buried in Greenwood Memorial Terrace in Spokane
