This coming Sunday is Father’s Day. The holiday was born 103 - TopicsExpress

This coming Sunday is Father’s Day. The holiday was born 103 years ago as the dream of a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd. Dodd’s father, William, was a Civil War veteran who raised six children (Sonora and her five brothers) on his own after his wife passed away. Dodd had seen the idea of Mother’s Day catch on, and, inspired by her own dad, decided there should be a day dedicated to fathers, too. On July 19, 1910, her idea started to become a reality when Washington held the first statewide Father’s Day. President Calvin Coolidge encouraged celebration of the holiday in the 1920s, and Lyndon Johnson made an official proclamation honoring dads in 1966. Six years later, years of hard work -- on the part of Dodd and many others -- finally paid off when Richard Nixon made Father’s Day an official national holiday. Tonight, let’s talk about the roles dads play in our lives -- and why they’re so worth celebrating.