Breckenridge Texan

Dads all across Breckenridge will be honored by their kids this morning as the United States celebrates Father’s Day on June 17, 2018.

Although there are several claims about who first came up with the concept of a day for honoring fathers, the U.S. Library of Congress and the Census Bureau offer this history: More than 100 years ago,  Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Washington, was listening to a Mother’s Day sermon and had the idea for a special day to honor her father, William Smart, a widowed Civil War veteran who was left to raise his six children on a farm. Because Dodd’s father was born in June, she encouraged churches in her area to honor fathers that month. The first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane in 1910.

Over the years, the idea spread, and people lobbied Congress to establish the holiday. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson, who had signed a proclamation establishing Mother’s Day, approved the idea, but never signed a proclamation for it. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge made it a national event to “establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.”

However, the holiday did not become official until 1966, when President Lyndon Johnson declared that the third Sunday in June would be Father’s Day. President Richard Nixon made the proclamation permanent in 1972.

The Census Bureau offers these fun facts for Father’s Day:

• 72.2 million — The estimated number of fathers across the nation in 2014, the most recent year for which data are available.
• 22,508 — The number of clothing stores, department stores, warehouse clubs and supercenters around the country where you could buy dad a dress shirt. Sales totaled an estimated $2.6 billion at these locations.
• 15,380 –The number of hardware stores, a place to buy hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers and other items high on the list of Father’s Day gifts.
• 21,890 –The number of sporting goods stores, where you could purchase traditional gifts for dad, such as fishing rods and golf clubs.
• 61.3 — The percentage of father’s who first became a dad in their 20s; 27.3 percent became a father for the first time in their 30s; 8.2 percent of first-time fathers were younger than 20; and, 3.3 percent of dads became a father for the first time when they were 40 or older.