YESTERDAY (Sunday, June 18), I and the rest of the fathers and father figures in the world celebrated Fathers’ Day. The essence of celebrating it is not to receive and give lavish gifts but to just cherish the essence and substance of being a father or children of those celebrating the occasion.
As written in Wikipedia, on June 19, 1910, a Father's Day celebration was held at the YMCA in Spokane, Washington by Sonora Smart Dodd. Her father, the civil war veteran William Jackson Smart, was a single parent who raised his six children there.
According to time and date website, Father's Day is celebrated worldwide to recognize the contribution that fathers and father figures make to the lives of their children. This day celebrates fatherhood and male parenting.
Although it is celebrated on a variety of dates worldwide, many countries observe this day on the third Sunday in June.
The campaign to celebrate the nation’s fathers, however, did not meet with the same enthusiasm–perhaps because, as one florist explained, “fathers haven’t the same sentimental appeal that mothers have.”
Based from the account provided by history, on July 5, 1908, or two years before the first recognized celebration, a West Virginia church sponsored the nation’s first event explicitly in honor of fathers, a Sunday sermon in memory of the 362 men who had died in the previous December’s explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah, but it was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday.
The following year, a Spokane, Washington, woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents. She went to local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers and government officials to drum up support for her idea, and she was successful.
As a result, Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on June 19, 1910.
From then on, the holiday spread. In 1916, President Wilson honored the day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Washington DC.
Consequently, in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day. It was learned that it was not until 1972 – 58 years after President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day official– that the day honoring fathers became a nationwide holiday in the United States.
The website continued that in 1972, in the middle of a hard-fought presidential re-election campaign, Richard Nixon signed a proclamation making Father’s Day a federal holiday at last.
As of this time, economists estimate that Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father’s Day gifts.
Today, the day honoring fathers is celebrated in the United States and even here in the Philippines on the third Sunday of June, Father’s Day 2017 occurs on June 18, so in the following year, Father’s Day 2018 falls on June 17.
This Corner hopes that we fathers shall remain to be role model and example to our children in particular and the community in general in providing them with words, thoughts and actions worthy of emulation.
- o0O0o –
Director’s Cut: (This portion features the thoughts of Atty. Alberto T. Escobarte, CESO IV, Regional Director, DepED Region 11 to all stakeholders and recipients of the efforts to improve the basic education). "Let me assure you that in the performance of my official duties and even my private acts will be guided and guarded by my Oath of Office, The PanunumpangKawaningGobyerno, the Philippine Constitution and all the laws that govern our actions.” - o0O0o – You can access DepED Updates, latest issuances, photos and other relevant information through our website: http://www.deped.gov.ph and our Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/deped.regionxi. For comments, suggestions and/or contributions, send your email to region11@deped.gov.ph. For queries, complains and other concerns for the different schools divisions email them to davao.city@deped.gov.ph, davao.delsur@deped.gov.ph, davao.delnorte@deped.gov.ph, tagum.city@deped.gov.ph, panabo.city@deped.gov.ph, igacos@deped.gov.ph, davao.oriental@deped.gov.ph, digos.city@deped.gov.ph, mati.city@deped.gov.ph and compostela.valley@deped.gov.ph.