Sunday, June 20, 2010
Dear Readers: Happy Father’s Day to all the men in our reading audience who have had the pleasures and responsibilities of raising children.
Having a caring father is not only one of life’s great joys, but fathers also are tremendously important to a child’s emotional, academic and moral development. Please take the time today to let yours know you are thinking of him.
Dear Annie: I read the column you printed on Mother’s Day, and one of your readers asked you for the words to the song “M-O-T-H-E-R.” I, too, need your help in finding the words to a song.
As an elementary student at the Sweetest Heart of Mary school in Detroit during the 1940s, our third-grade class sang a song to honor our fathers. My memory says it was similar to the one for mothers and began, “Song writers write about mothers, songs that are touching and sad, but no one writes songs about fathers, so I’ll sing this song to my dad. F is for the ...” My memory fails me at this point.
I would be delighted if you could help.
Walt Paluch, Montgomery, Ala.
Dear Walt: You sent us on quite a chase. We contacted Norman Lamberti, Sweetest Heart of Mary Class of 1957 and president of the alumni association. Unfortunately, none matched yours. So, dear readers, if you are familiar with this song, please help Walt out and send us the words. We promise to print them.
Dear Readers: A few years ago, we printed the history of Mother’s Day. Now it’s Dad’s turn. Dr. Robert Webb of West Virginia is believed to have conducted the first Father’s Day service in 1908, but most historians credit Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Wash., with the idea of making Father’s Day a national day of recognition.
According to the story, Dodd heard a sermon about the sacrifices made by mothers and thought her own father, Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, deserved equal accolades because he had raised her five siblings and her after their mother died. Dodd arranged her first Father’s Day celebration on June 19, 1910. (She initially wanted it on June 5, her father’s birthday, but had to wait for sermons to be written on this new subject.) The idea was wholeheartedly supported by local ministers and members of the Spokane YMCA.
However, her idea to make it a national holiday received a less enthusiastic response. Some considered it a joke. In 1913, the idea was approved by President Woodrow Wilson, and in 1916, a bill was finally introduced. But the all-male Congress felt it might be interpreted as too self-serving. The bill was defeated.
In 1957, Sen. Margaret Chase Smith wrote to Congress saying, “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.” In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson made a proclamation that the third Sunday of June be Father’s Day, but it wasn’t until 1972, under President Richard Nixon, that Father’s Day became an official, permanent national holiday.
Creators Syndicate
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