In 1909, Sonora Smart Dodd sat in a Spokane church listening to a sermon about motherhood. Having been raised with her five younger brothers single-handedly by her widowed father, Dodd felt that fatherhood also deserved a “place in the sun,” and took it upon herself to advocate a special day for dads.
After receiving an enthusiastic endorsement from the Spokane Ministerial Alliance and the local YMCA, the first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane on June 19, 1910. The concept spread, and by the 1920s Father’s Day was commonly observed throughout the country. In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon made it a permanent national holiday.
—retrieved from HistoryLink.org