1. A sermon about Mother's Day gave Sonora Smart Dodd the idea in 1909
In May 1909, Sonora Smart Dodd was 27 and living in Spokane, a city in Washington State. She was listening to a Mother's Day sermon when she had a thought: if mothers get a special day, why not fathers?[1]
Her reason was personal. Her father, William Jackson Smart, was a Civil War veteran. After his wife died, he raised Sonora and her five younger brothers on his own.[1] Sonora did not just wish for a holiday. She worked with local ministers, shopkeepers and the YMCA (a community organization for young people) to make one happen.[1] The next question was simple: which day should it be?
2. The first Father's Day moved from her father's birthday to the third Sunday of June
Sonora suggested June 5, her father's birthday. That date was pushed back to the third Sunday in June.[1] The House of Representatives' history office says the same: she first proposed June 5, and the Spokane group that approved the celebration scheduled it for the third Sunday.[2] Neither source says why. It may simply have been easier to organize church services on a Sunday, but that is a guess, not something the sources state.
So the first Father's Day took place on Sunday, June 19, 1910.[1] Here is a small detail you can check yourself: if June 19 was a Sunday, then June 5 two weeks earlier was a Sunday too. The date was not changed to fit the weekday. Whatever the reason, the Spokane celebration was held on the third Sunday in June that year, and that is still the rule today.
3. What happened at the first Father's Day in Spokane, including the red and white roses
On June 19, 1910, Spokane's churches and businesses took time to honor fathers. Presbyterian and Methodist churches gave special sermons about fatherhood. Boys from the YMCA wore roses on their jackets: red for a boy whose father was alive, white for a boy whose father had died.[1] Sonora also delivered gifts to fathers who were disabled. Washington's governor, M. E. Hay, issued a proclamation, so the day was observed across the state.[1]
That means the day made room for two feelings at once: thanks for the dad you have and memories of one you have lost. Even in 1910, though, it was a local event, a long way from a national holiday.
4. Why Congress took until 1972 to make Father's Day official
Support came early, but a law did not. A bill for a national Father's Day was introduced in Congress in 1913. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson honored the Spokane celebration by pressing a telegraph key at the White House that unfurled a flag in Spokane. He tried to make the day official nationwide, but Congress resisted, fearing the day would become too commercial. That was already happening with Mother's Day, which Wilson had signed into official recognition in 1914.[1]
In 1924 President Calvin Coolidge recommended that Father's Day be observed nationwide, but he did not make it an official proclamation.[1][2] In 1957 Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine scolded Congress for honoring mothers but not fathers.[1] In 1966 President Lyndon B. Johnson issued an order naming the third Sunday in June as Father's Day.[1] Finally, on April 24, 1972, President Richard Nixon signed Public Law 92-278, which set Father's Day on the third Sunday in June every year.[2]
Counting from 1910 to 1972 gives 62 years (my own subtraction). Sonora Smart Dodd lived to see it. She died in 1978 at age 96,[1] so she was about 90 when the law was signed (my own calculation from those two facts).
The worry about shopping was not imaginary. In the 1930s Sonora began promoting the day again, helped by trade groups that stood to gain from a gift-giving holiday, such as makers of ties and hats and tobacco shops.[1] The story is not perfectly clear-cut, either: Spokesman-Review also records other people who organized Father's Days in other places in the 1910s and believed theirs was the first.[1] Sonora's Spokane celebration is the one that grew into the national day, but it was not the only idea of its kind.
5. Try it yourself: how early or late can the third Sunday in June fall?
Take a calendar and circle every Sunday in June. Which one is the third? Try a few different years. You will find it is never earlier than the 15th and never later than the 21st. If June 1 is a Sunday, the Sundays are the 1st, 8th and 15th. If June 7 is a Sunday, they are the 7th, 14th and 21st (my own reasoning). June 19, 1910, fits inside that range.
To read more, the House history page lists the 1972 law and its number, and the Spokesman-Review timeline walks through the story year by year.[2][1] You could also ask: why do you think Congress was more worried about a "fathers' day" turning into a shopping day than a "mothers' day"? It had already seen what happened to the second one.