Father's Day -Don DeForge, VMD Silver Sands Veterinary

Father's Day: That Was the Day That Was! 

Don DeForge, VMD Silver Sands Veterinary Center

June 21, 2015

ORIGINS OF FATHER’S DAY --from history.com

The campaign to celebrate the nation’s fathers did not meet with the same enthusiasm–perhaps because, as one florist explained, “fathers haven’t the same sentimental appeal that mothers have.” On July 5, 1908, a West Virginiachurch sponsored the nation’s first event explicitly in honor of fathers, a Sunday sermon in memory of the 362 men who had died in the previous December’s explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah, but it was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday. The next year, a Spokane, Washington woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents. She went to local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers and government officials to drum up support for her idea, and she was successful: Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on July 19, 1910. Slowly, the holiday spread. In 1916, President Wilson honored the day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Washington, D.C. In 1924, PresidentCalvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day. However, many men continued to disdain the day. As one historian writes, they “scoffed at the holiday’s sentimental attempts to domesticate manliness with flowers and gift-giving, or they derided the proliferation of such holidays as a commercial gimmick to sell more products–often paid for by the father himself.”

FATHER’S DAY: CONTROVERSY AND COMMERCIALISM

During the 1920s and 1930s, a movement arose to scrap Mother’s Day and Father’s Day altogether in favor of a single holiday, Parents’ Day. Every year on Mother’s Day, pro-Parents’ Day groups rallied in New York City’s Central Park–a public reminder, said Parents’ Day activist and radio performer Robert Spere, “that both parents should be loved and respected together.” Paradoxically, however, the Depression derailed this effort to combine and de-commercialize the holidays. Struggling retailers and advertisers redoubled their efforts to make Father’s Day a “second Christmas” for men, promoting goods such as neckties, hats, socks, pipes and tobacco, golf clubs and other sporting goods, and greeting cards. When World War II began, advertisers began to argue that celebrating Father’s Day was a way to honor American troops and support the war effort. By the end of the war, Father’s Day may not have been a federal holiday, but it was a national institution.

In 1972, in the middle of a hard-fought presidential re-election campaign, Richard Nixon signed a proclamation making Father’s Day a federal holiday at last. Today, economists estimate that Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father’s Day gifts.

Anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad, and that's why I call you dad, because you are so special to me. You taught me the game and you taught me how to play it right.

Wade Boggs

Until you have a son of your own... you will never know the joy, the love beyond feeling that resonates in the heart of a father as he looks upon his son.

Kent Nerburn

When it comes to Father's Day, I will remember my dad for both being there to nurture me and also for the times he gave me on my own to cultivate my own interests and to nurture my own spirit.

Jennifer Grant

My father used to say that it's never too late to do anything you wanted to do. And he said, 'You never know what you can accomplish until you try.'

Michael Jordan

I think my mom put it best. She said, 'Little girls soften their daddy's hearts.'

Paul Walker

Being a father has been, without a doubt, my greatest source of achievement, pride and inspiration. Fatherhood has taught me about unconditional love, reinforced the importance of giving back and taught me how to be a better person.

Naveen Jain

Commentary by Dr. Don DeForge

I have been blessed to be the father of a daughter and son.  That is quite a wonderful feeling!  When Father's Day approaches and passes each year, I think not of myself as a father but I think about the gifts that I have been given of two great and very special children.  I see being a father as the greatest gift a man could ever receive.  It is more important that fancy vacation homes; special cars; boats; or trips around the world.  Being a Dad is a wonder without monetary value.  It is the true gift of love.  So Happy Father's Day to new Dads; step-Dads; grand-Dads and old Dads.  My special friend who lives inside of me, Leo Buscaglia, once said...."I have learned that love is the most powerful force available to us. When we have real love, we have the strength to perform miracles."

Happy Father's Day  21June2015

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