"Father assumed the role of father-mother in the rearing of his six children,” said Sonora Dodd, the founder of Father's Day in America. "The Widower," 1875, by Luke Fildes. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Public Domain
Just after 10 a.m. on Dec. 6, 1907, explosions rocked the small town of Monongah, West Virginia. As clouds of smoke rolled into the morning sky, word quickly spread that the N0. 6 and No. 8 mines of the Fairmont Coal Company had blown up, detonations likely caused by dust and gas within the mines. With the entrances collapsed, and the shafts of this gigantic complex filled with rubble, smoke, and gas, rescue efforts were slow, and the likelihood of survivors almost nil.
Widows of deceased miners (R) wait at the the mouth of mine No. 8 of the Fairmount Coal Co., in Monongah, W. Va., while officials retrieve the bodies. Photograph printed in the Spokane Press on Friday, Dec. 13, 1907. Library of Congress. Public Domain
The number of dead, a good number of them adolescent boys, exceeded 350 workers. It was the deadliest mine disaster in the history of the United States.
And it was this tragic event that gave America its first Father’s Day.
Lonely Children and Heartbroken Wives
Following this catastrophe, Grace Golden Clayton of nearby Fairmont was haunted by thoughts of the families, wives, and children those miners had left behind. At least 210 of those men were fathers. Clayton, who had lost her own father 10 years earlier and still dearly missed him, approached the minister of her church and asked that a service be held for all fathers on July 5, 1908.
Grace Golden Clayton (circa 1910), founder of the first Father's Day remembrance service on July 5, 1908. Public Domain
“It was partly the explosion that set me to think how important and loved most fathers are,” Clayton later said. “All those lonely little children and those heartbroken wives and mothers, made orphans and widows in a matter of a few minutes! Oh, how sad and frightening to have no father, no husband, to turn to at such an awful time.”
Despite these sentiments, Clayton’s idea of a homage to fathers never reached beyond the bounds of Fairmont. Both the date chosen—the day after the town had celebrated Independence Day—and the failure to publicize and continue this memorial celebration seemingly made it a one-time event.
"The Widower," 1875, by Luke Fildes. Oil on canvas. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Public Domain
In 1865, a young Civil War veteran, William Smart, married Elizabeth Harris. The couple had three children when Elizabeth died in 1878. In 1880, Smart married again, this time to a widow, Ellen, mother of three. The couple would go on to have six children of their own: a girl, Sonora, followed by five boys, including twins. Sonora was 16 when in 1898 Ellen died in childbirth and her father became a widower for the second time.
The tenderness and wisdom her father showed toward his children, and his immediate assumption of the reins of responsibility for the family, guided Sonora Dodd for the rest of her life. Later, for instance, she told family members that on the night of her mother’s funeral, her grieving 7-year-old brother ran out into the cold night. William Smart went after his son, brought him inside, and cradled him in his lap before the fire until the boy fell asleep. In many other ways as well, he acted as a cradle for all his motherless children. “Father assumed the role of father-mother in the rearing of his six children,” Dodd told an interviewer in 1964. “This role he performed with courage and selflessness until we were all in homes of our own.”
Over a decade after her mother’s death, on May 9, 1909, Dodd heard a sermon about Mother’s Day at Central United Methodist Church in Spokane, Washington. Afterward, she spoke to the minister and asked, “Don’t you think fathers deserve a place in the sun, too?”
The Long Campaign
A portrait of Sonora Smart Dodd, founder of Father’s Day, from the Joel E. Ferris Research Archives at the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture/Eastern Washington State Historical Society. Courtesy of the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture
The minister agreed, and the following year, Spokane celebrated Father’s Day. Much of the credit for the success of this event goes to Dodd. Married to John Bruce Dodd in 1899 and mother to one son, Jack, her life’s accomplishments are a tribute both to her and to her dad. Beginning in 1918, she spent four years studying art in Chicago, earned her high school diploma at the age of 44, painted, and for a short time designed costumes in Hollywood.
Dodd brought these gifts of initiative and perseverance to her advocacy for Father’s Day. For the first celebration in Spokane, she worked tirelessly with different churches, the YMCA, and local newspapers to make certain the event was well-publicized. Though she originally wished her father’s birthday, June 5, to serve for Father’s Day, she relented when others recommended pushing the date two weeks later into the month to separate it a bit more from Mother’s Day.
Dodd’s efforts and diligence paid off. As Aurelia Scott writes in the Almanac newsletter article, “Where Did Father’s Day Come From? Let’s All Cheer for Fathers,” on that Sunday in 1910 “the first Father’s Day events commenced: Sonora delivered presents to handicapped fathers, boys from the YMCA decorated their lapels with fresh-cut roses (red for living fathers, white for the deceased), and the city’s ministers devoted their homilies to fatherhood.”
But Dodd refused to rest on her laurels. For decades afterward, she promoted the idea of a day devoted to fatherhood. She remained active in organizing the event in Spokane, wrote letters to newspapers and officials in government, and spoke frequently to different gatherings about her hopes for a nationally recognized Father’s Day.
Progress toward that goal proceeded at a snail’s pace. Many men first considered the idea effeminate, connecting the proposed holiday with the flowers associated with Mother’s Day. Others derided the idea as one more money-making scheme for businesses. Believing that the holiday would become as commercialized as Mother’s Day, in 1916 Congress itself rejected a proposal for a National Father’s Day.
Recognition
A vintage Father's Day card from the Edward L. Parke Collection at the Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division. USMC Archives/CC BY 2.0 DEED
Both the Great Depression and World War II gave Father’s Day a boost. Strapped retailers promoted Father’s Day to help boost sales of such items as ties, pens, pipes, and tobacco. During the war, both politicians and the country supported this special day as a way of recognizing the many fathers serving in the military. By war’s end, Father’s Day was a popular holiday around the nation.
Nearly 20 more years slipped by before President Lyndon Johnson issued a proclamation formally recognizing the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. In 1972, President Richard Nixon signed a joint resolution of Congress making Father’s Day a national holiday.
With that official recognition Sonora Dodd’s decades-long wish came true. She died six years later.
Richard Nixon and his Daughters (L) Julie Nixon Eisenhower and Tricia Nixon on Father's Day, June 15, 1969. Nixon White House Photographs. Public Domain
In 1965, recollecting the man who had inspired all her work and effort, Dodd said, “My own father never accepted Father’s Day as personal to himself. But to all fathers—worthy fathers.”
And these are the men, these worthy fathers, living and dead, we honor this Father’s Day of 2024.
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Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust On Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning As I Go” and “Movies Make The Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.
