The Mothers of Father’s Day

Monday, June 17, 2007

The Mothers of Father’s Day

BerkshireFatherhood.com

By Rinaldo Del Gallo, III

Many attribute Fathers Day to Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd (pictured left), who was born in Jenny Lin, Arkansas in 1882. Ms. Dodd’s father, William Jackson Smart, was a civil war veteran and took his family to Spokane, WA as a pioneer out west. When Ms. Dodd was 16, her mother died in childbirth. She and her father raised five younger brothers, and she adored her father.

The story of Father’s Day was portentious of the diminishing of the importance of father’s that was to come. It did not happen merely because Ms. Dodd (also pictured right) thought that fathers should be celebrated. On a Mother’s Day in 1910, Ms. Dodd went to a church service. She thought it was wrong that mother’s were recognized and fathers were not. It was then that she approached the Spokane Ministerial Alliance. The Ministerial Alliance picked the third Sunday in June, and the holiday was born as we presently know it in June. The first June Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19, 1910, in Spokane, WA. Young men from the YMCA wore roses to church. A red rose honored a living father; a white rose was worn in memory of a deceased father. Mrs. Dodd herself rode through town in a horse-drawn carriage and distributed gifts to shut-in fathers.

Soon, newspapers around the nation were writing about the Spokane Father’s Day and the need for national recognition. President Woodrow Wilson spoke in Spokane on Father’s Day in 1916. It did not become a nationally recognized annual holidy until 1972 through the efforts of President Nixon. Ms. Dodd spent much of her life seeking official Congressional recognition—she died in 1978.

Some people also claim that Mrs. Grace Golden Clayton founded Father’s Day. She sponsored a celebration on July 5, 1908 in Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South in Fairmont, West Virginia. The prior December a mine explosion in Monongah, West Virginia, killed more than 360 men, 210 of whom were fathers, many of who were also Italian immigrants. Click on the link
FirstFathersDay.us for more information about Fairmont, West Virginia’s claim to be the first Father’s Day.

(Pictured above is the morque at Monongah, West Virgina after the mining disaster that killed so many fathers.)

The Fairmont Times of September 23, 1979 has this quote by Ms. Grace Clayton:

“It was partly the explosion that got me to thinking how important and loved most fathers are. All those lonely children and those heart-broken 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.”

Both Dodd and Clayton picked Sunday’s close to their own father’s birthday—Dodd was trying for June 5th but there wasn’t enough time to prepare.

In 1957, Senator Margaret Chase Smith (pictured above) wrote Congress as follows:

“Either we honor both our parents, mother and father, or let us desist from honoring either one.  But to single out just one of our two parents and omit the other is the most grievous insult imaginable.”

It is fitting and proper that women started and were the champions of Father’s Day. All these women, Ms. Sarah Dodd, Ms. Grace Clayton, and Senator Chase Smith can be rightly be called, “The Mothers of Father’s Day.” They all recognized the equal importance of the father to the mother, and fought for a national day of recognition, equal in import to that of mothers. To these great women, the Berkshire Fatherhood Coalition expresses are deepest gratitude.

Rinaldo Del Gallo, III, Esq.

The author is the spokesperson of the Berkshire Fatherhood Coalition.

413-445-6789

Click HERE to contact Attorney Del Gallo.

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About Rinaldo Del Gallo Rinaldo Del Gallo, III, Esq. is the spokesperson of the Berkshire Fatherhood Coalition, whose website is BerkshireFatherhood.com. He has been practicing family law attorney and has been a member of the Massachusetts bar since 1996. Mr. Del Gallo has handled a wide variety of family law cases including issues of child custody, child visitation, child support, restraining orders, grandparent visitation, contempt of family court, access to academic records, guardianship, allegations of abuse, criminal allegations related to domestic violence, disputes over the care of a child, and care and protection proceedings before the Department of Social Services. For years, he has hosted bi-monthly free legal seminars for people of any gender having problems in family court. On behalf of non-custodial parents, he has had made numerous media appearances in printed news, radio, and television. He has authored numerous family law related articles and columns. He has performed extensive bro bono work for fathers. Attorney Del Gallo also has extensive experience as a civil rights attorney, working in the areas of free speech rights and ballot access. Mr. Del Gallo is also an intellectual property attorney and a patent lawyer, and has written what is regarded as one of the most famous law reviews in the area of patent law, “Are Methods of Doing Business Finally Out of Business As A Statutory Exception?,” that helped end the so-called “business method exception,” which paved the way for an entire field of software and Internet related patents. Attorney Del Gallo graduated from Northeastern University (Boston) with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, and graduated from George Washington University (Washington) in the top of his three-year class. | More from Rinaldo Del Gallo, III