Today is Fathers' Day. A Google search for "origins" and "proclamations" doesn't serve up much -- the basics are here:
Father's Day was first celebrated in Spokane, Washington on June 19, 1910. Sonora Smart Dodd originally thought of the idea while listening to a Mother's Day sermon the previous year. Dodd and her five siblings were raised single handedly by their father, William Jackson Smart, after their mother died during childbirth in 1898. Her petition advocating a national father's day was supported by the local ministerial association and the Young Men's Christian Association. . .
Compare this to the Mothers' Day Proclamation, which I posted here, and which begins with "Arise then, women of this day!"
I have been blessed with a loving stepfather, Joseph Serr, who came into our lives when I was nearly grown, and has stayed steady ever since, through dramas and traumas that would have dissuaded a lesser man.
Those interested in the ambivalences and ambiguities of the father-child relationship might want to explore the Father Poems in Poets' Corner at Fieralingue.
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