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ESSENTIALS
- Father’s Day is celebrated this year on June 19th
- The day honors fatherhood and the bond that children share with their fathers and fatherly figures
- The day was started by Sonora Smart Dodd
Why is Father’s Day celebrated on the third Sunday in June?
American Sonora Smart Dodd, the daughter of William Jackson Smart and Ellen Victoria Cheek Smart, lost her mother at the age of 16. Dodd was just 16 when her mother died at age 47 while giving birth to her sixth child.
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After her mother’s death, her father, a Civil War veteran, raised all six children alone.
Dodd was moved by her father’s involvement in the children’s lives. As she heard a Mother’s Day sermon at church, she felt that there should also be a special day to celebrate fathers.
She contacted the Spokane Ministerial Alliance and requested that they recognize her father’s birthday, June 5, as Father’s Day. The Alliance accepted the concept of dedicating a special day to fathers, but chose the third Sunday in June to celebrate Father’s Day.
Father’s Day is usually celebrated with children giving gifts and greeting cards to their fathers and spending the day with them.
