An update from Representative Ingraham

We will all had another opportunity to celebrate Father’s Day on June 15th.  Father’s Day is a celebration honoring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds and the influence of fathers in society.  

Following a church sermon about the newly recognized Mother’s Day in 1909, Ms. Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington felt strongly that fatherhood needed recognition.  Ms. Dodd wanted a celebration that honored fathers like her own father, William Smart, a Civil War Veteran who was left to raise his family alone when his wife died giving birth to their sixth child when Sonora was 16 years old.  

The following year in her pursuit of establishing Father’s Day and with the assistance of her pastor at the Old Centenary Presbyterian Church (now Knox Presbyterian Church), Sonora took the idea for a Father’s Day celebration to the Spokane YMCA.  They Spokane YMCA, along with the Ministerial Alliance, endorsed Ms. Dodd’s idea and helped it spread by celebrating the first Father’s Day in 1910.

Ms. Sonora Dodd and suggested her father’s birthday, June 5, be established as the day to honor all Fathers, however the pastors wanted more time to prepare, so on June 19, 1910 young members of the YMCA went to church wearing roses: a red rose to honor a living father and a white rose to honor a deceased one.

It took many years to make Father’s Day an official holiday.  In 1913 a bill to accord national recognition of the holiday was introduced into Congress, but failed to pass.  In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson went to speak at a Father’s Day celebration and wanted to make it official, but again resisted.  In 1924 President Calvin Coolidge recommended that Father’ Day be observed by the nation, but stopped short of issuing a national proclamation as the two earlier attempts had failed.  In 1957, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith wrote a proposal accusing Congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years while honoring mothers.  In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day.  Then in what had been a long journey for Ms. Dodd and so many others, President Richard Nixon made Father’s Day a permanent national holiday when he signed it into law in 1972.

However, there is more to the story, as there was another first day of observance of Father’s Day which actually took place in Fairmont, West Virginia on July 5, 1908.  It was organized by Mrs. Grace Golden Clayton, who wanted to celebrate the lives of the 210 fathers who had been lost in the Monongah Mining disaster on December 6, 1907.  

Ms. Clayton had chosen the Sunday nearest to the birthday of her recently decease father.  Unfortunately, the day was overshadowed by other events in the city and West Virginia did not officially register the holiday and it was not celebrated again and the rest is history, with all the credit for Father’s Day going to Ms. Sonora Dodd.

With Father’s Day, both residents and visitors alike, due to the passage of a bill passed by the 62nd Legislature in 2011, had an opportunity to enjoy a bit of Montana’s old fashioned hospitality - that of being able to fish on Father’s day weekend,  June 14-15th, 2014 without obtaining a fishing license.

This free fishing weekend allows a person to fish within this state without obtaining a fishing license as long as the person does so in accordance with any other law or regulation of the department in effect on that weekend.  

So, for all you avid or would be fishermen, I hope you checked the fishing regulations, grabbed your poles, headed to the water, baited your hooks, enjoyed the opportunity that Montana’s hospitality provides and remembered to celebrate Father’s Day as it was meant to be, by honoring and remembering the influence of father’s in our society, as well as a fish or two along the way!

Now it is your turn to “Keep in Touch” by contacting me regarding your questions or concerns. I can be reached via e-mail at pathd13@blackfoot.net, or call me at 827-4652 or by mail at P.O. Box 1151, Thompson Falls, Montana 59873.