• From History.com
On July 19, 1910, the governor of the state of Washington proclaimed the nation’s first “Father’s Day.” However, it was not until 1972 — 58 years after President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day official — that the day became a nationwide holiday in the United States. This year it is being celebrated on Sunday, June 19.
Origin of Mother’s Day
The “Mother’s Day” we celebrate today has its origins in the peace-and-reconciliation campaigns of the post-Civil War era. During the 1860s, at the urging of activist Ann Reeves Jarvis, one divided West Virginia town celebrated “Mother’s Work Days” that brought together the mothers of Confederate and Union soldiers. In 1870, the civic activist Julia Ward Howe issued a “Mother’s Day Proclamation” calling on a “general congress of women” to “promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, [and] the great and general interests of peace.”
However, Mother’s Day did not become a commercial holiday until 1908, when — inspired by Jarvis’s daughter Anna, who wanted to honor her own mother by making Mother’s Day a national holiday — the John Wanamaker department store in Philadelphia sponsored a service dedicated to mothers in its auditorium. Thanks in large part to this association with retailers, who saw great potential for profit in the holiday, Mother’s Day caught on right away. In 1909, 45 states observed the day, and in 1914, President Wilson approved a resolution that made the second Sunday in May a holiday in honor of “that tender, gentle army, the mothers of America.”
Origins of Father’s Day
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 Virginia church 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, WV, but it was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday. The next year, a Spokane, WA, woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to
• See who the editors of History.com picked as “History’s Best and Worst Dads.”
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. She was successful: The state of Washington 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, DC. In 1924, Read More »
Meeting at Quigley’s Restaurant
CITIZENSHIP AWARDS — Family members and school staffers accompanied a trio of local high school seniors who received “SRC Rotary Citizenship Awards.” Checks for $1,000 each were presented by Terry Brewer and Debbie Rodriguez to Michaela Mueller of Maple Hill High School, who will study civil engineering at the University of Hartford in the fall; Jolene Bell of Rensselaer High School, who will study dance at the University of Utah; and, Matt McHugh of Columbia High School, son of club member Jim McHugh, who will study biology at Siena College. The students were recommended by their respective schools based on their academic, civic, and extracurricular records.
Third Thursday Breakfast Meeting
Anyone who has been a Rotarian for even a short time probably has been asked more than once, “What IS Rotary?”
If this graph looks familiar, then you’ve been visiting our online club calendar. Actually, even if you haven’t been, that still is what it looks like. So there.
June 30 is a specially significant date for the Southern Rensselaer County Rotary Club. That’s the time set aside for the annual “Presidential Changeover,” which this year will have a few added touches.
