In 1909, Smart's daughter, Sonora Dodd, got the idea for a day to honor fathers while she was attending church in celebration of mother's day. She especially wanted to honor her father's sacrifices made when he chose to take on the roles of both mother and father to his children.
Sonora chose the month of June to do the honors because that was the month in which her father was born. The first celebration was held on June 19, 1910.
The idea caught on, but it wasn't until 1966 that a presidential proclamation made the third Sunday in June Father's Day. The holiday was made permanent in 1972 when Richard Nixon signed it into law.
What is a father? If you ask twenty people, you will get twenty different answers. There is no one certain answer except for the dictionary definition which says a father is someone who "begets or raises or nurtures a child." That is the clinical definition for the word.
We can clarify the word "father" by putting another word in front of it. It's only a four letter word, but it changes the meaning. The word is "real."
Ironically, a man who religiously pledged himself not to marry and have children explained it best. Pope John XXIII said, "It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father." This is true and paraphrases one of my favorite sayings although I don't know who said it. Anyone can be a father, but it takes a real man to be a daddy.
Anyone can sire a child, but a special person does the things that need to be done to raise that child in an environment of love and understanding. This is a real father. He doesn't even have to be the biological father of the child. He can be a step father or an adopted father. "Father" isn't the key word, "real" is.
Fathers are often so busy earning a living and so tired after they get home from work, they don't even realize the importance of their job as a father. An Old English proverb states, "One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters."
He teaches his children by example. Chances are if a father uses drugs, a child will use drugs. If a father curses, a child will curse. If a father goes to church, a child will go to church.
A father doesn't even have to tell his children what to do. As Clarence Kelland once observed about his father, "My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it." Setting a good example is what a real father does.
Children idolize their parents. My four-year-old granddaughter described her father to me. She said, "Grandma, my daddy can do anything. He's very, very strong."
This reminds me of an email I got that describes how children look at their fathers. This is true of mothers also.
I can see this happening as our daughters grow older. In fact, our youngest daughter admitted this to me one day during her senior year at college. I know it must be true because she also admitted it to one of her classmates when she told him she was really surprised how smart her parents had gotten since she got out of high school.
Written by an anonymous author, this little poem, in some ways, describes all of us:
4 years: My Daddy can do anything!
7 years: My Dad knows a lot
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