Postcard from the Past: Father’s Day, June 17, Every Dog Has His Day

Compiled by Dick Perue

This intriguing headline topped a Father’s Day article in the June 13, 1928 issue of  The Wyoming State Journal of Lander, followed by this story:

Well, father’s come into his own at last. 

Father’s Day has been held his since 1914, but it has had as much trouble as a chancery suit in a mid-Victorian novel. Some people seemed to resent the notion a father could have anything all to himself. 

They would not even let him have his own flower, but insisted the dandelion was the flower for Father’s Day. Somebody discovered the more one tramples on a dandelion, the stronger it grows.

This was the Old Man to a T, but the dandelion idea did not go at all. Nobody who buys flowers to sell again bought any dandelions, so everybody who bought flowers for Father’s Day bought red roses because somebody told them red roses were the flower for Father’s Day. And, red roses are pretty.

Nobody asked father about it. It was all right with him, only he did wish they would give the flowers to mother or the girls.

But Father’s Day this year is June 17, and the whole country is really awakened to it.

The world of home – of mothers, sons and daughters – loves father and knows how good, decent and unselfish he is. They all wanted to do something for him. Year by year they have been doing it in greater numbers on Father’s Day. They gave him ties, bathrobes, clippers, golf clubs, cigars and everything.

The actual history of Father’s Day began in 1910 when Mrs. John Bruce Dodd of Spokane, Wash. promoted the Father’s Day notion so successfully the city of Spokane made it a holiday with a big celebration. 

The idea took hold, and the day was observed first on the second Sunday in June. 

Congress endorsed the celebration of Father’s Day in 1914, and the date was made the third Sunday in June. The second Sunday in June is actually Children’s Day, but is not generally observed as a national festival. 

Real, positive efforts have been made to change Father’s Day and make it Father and Son Day and also Father and Mother Day, but it did not succeed.

Humorists, satirists and all kinds of public bug hunters have jibed and joked and viewed with alarm the notion of Father’s Day, seeing in it only as a commercial opportunity promoted by merchants of articles of remembrance. But the sons and daughters of America – to say nothing of the mothers – have vindicated the thought father, the American father, is well entitled to his own distinctive day. – Colony Coyote