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The Best Dad Ever
Making Father's Day Special for Everyone By Mark Stackpole
In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered a presidential proclamation that officially declared the third Sunday in June Father's Day. Although this was the first year that it was a national holiday, Father's Day had been celebrated since 1910 and endorsed by the U.S. government since 1916. It was a daughter's attempt to honor her father, a widowed Civil War veteran who raised six kids after losing his wife in childbirth. That was quite a gift that Mrs. Sonora Louise Smart Dodd gave to her father, William Jackson Smart. She basically created a holiday for him I knew I wanted a daughter.
I'm not expecting anything quite so grand from my daughter, Corinne, this Father's Day, but then, she'll only be about 6 months old when Father's Day rolls around. Mrs. Dodd was 27 years old when she first tried to get support for her Father's Day idea. I'm not a very patient guy, but I'm willing to give Corinne a little time before she gives me a gift of such magnitude. Maybe by the time she hits preschool...
This will be my first Father's Day as an actual father, but we've been celebrating this day in my house for a long time. This year it happens to be my birthday. Now, before I became a father, I didn't really like it when the two events fell on the same date. People would actually rather stay home with their families than come over and give me presents. Go figure.
When you're a kid, anything that results in fewer presents is a bad thing. But now, the situation is finally tilted in my favor. Now, I get to celebrate both events, and I am already plotting. Is it appropriate to make a list of things that I want for Father's Day, or should I just make my birthday list longer?
I do understand that there are some standard Father's Day gifts. When I was a kid, Dad used to wear moccasin slippers, so every year, he could count on a new pair of those. I also distinctly remember at least one soap-on-a-rope and a fancy (well, gold-plated) shaving set. There was the T
