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The history of Father’s Day is relatively recent. Its first celebration took place on June 5, 1908, to complement Mother’s Day, and it presently honors our forefathers, as well.
The very first Father’s Day was organized and celebrated by Mrs. Grace Golden Clayton. She wanted to recognize the lives of 210 fathers whose lives had been lost in the Monongah Mining disaster a few months before, in West Virginia. The unfortunate fate of these men took place on December 6, 1907, and there is a church called the First Father’s Day Church, which still stands in Fairmont, West Virginia, today.
Another theory to the history of Father’s Day is that Sonora Smart Dodd recognized that fathers needed to be celebrated just as mothers were. She had been listening to a church sermon in 1909, and she wanted people to celebrate the life of her own father, who was a Civil War veteran and had to raise a family after his wife died in childbirth. With a reverend’s assistance, the first Father’s Day occurred in 1910, and Sonoma had suggested her own father’s birthday as the day of celebration. However, more time was needed to prepare, and the date ended up to be June 19, 1910.
It actually took many more years for the country to consider Father’s Day as an actual day of celebration. Where Mother’s Day was taken very seriously, Father’s Day was joked about. After several attempts, by various politicians, finally in 1966 Lyndon B. Johnson issued a proclamation honoring all fathers, and he designated the third Sunday in June as being Father’s Day from that point on.
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the Fathers Day
History with your
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