Global Courant
LOS ANGELES — You could call her the Mother of Father’s Day.
The late Sonora Smart Dodd launched the celebration of fathers in 1910 in her hometown of Spokane, Washington. As a result, she’s the one responsible for the annual gifts that run the gamut from embarrassingly silly ties to child finger paintings that are so lovingly crafted by those tiny hands that they can bring tears to even the most. stoic father.
It’s a tradition Dodd decided to start when she sat in a church in Spokane on Mother’s Day 1909 listening to a sermon on – what else? – Mothers Day.
“And it bothered her,” Dodd’s great-granddaughter, Betsy Roddy, told The Associated Press in 2017. “She thought, ‘Why isn’t there Father’s Day?’
After all, Dodd and her five younger brothers had been raised by their father after their mother died in childbirth in 1898.
William Jackson Smart became a farmer after fighting in the Civil War. He not only fulfilled both parental roles, but did so with “leadership and love,” his daughter used to say, and she thought he should get some credit.
“So she worked tirelessly with the local clergy and got the YWCA on board, and they had their first Father’s Day in Spokane in 1910,” Roddy said, showing a copy of The River Press of Fort Benton, Montana, which reported did of the event. .
While that story predicted next year’s celebration would take place nationwide, Father’s Day was slow to take off. So much so that Dodd spent the next 62 years lobbying everyone from presidents to retailers for support.
Finally, in 1972, President Richard Nixon declared the third Sunday in June a federal holiday honoring fathers. Dodd, who died in 1978 at the age of 96, had lived to see her dream come true.
A Renaissance woman, the Mother of Father’s Day was a painter, poet and businesswoman, ran a funeral parlor with her husband while raising the couple’s only son, a father-to-be named Jack.
“I’m very proud of that renegade spirit she clearly had,” says Roddy, director of marketing for a large Los Angeles company.
Dodd’s great-granddaughter herself inherited something of that spirit. She grew up in Washington, DC and received a bachelor’s degree in English from Penn State before spending several years backpacking in Europe between her studies at Vienna’s Webster University, where she earned a master’s degree in international business.
She moved to Los Angeles decades ago, found her niche in marketing and stayed. She eventually moved into a Craftsman-style home on the west side of town, where she lives with her two dogs.
The only child of an only child and recently widowed after 24 years of marriage, Roddy never had children of his own. That not only gives her the title of Father’s Day great-granddaughter, but also ensures that she is the last direct descendant of the holiday’s creator.
Although she has always been well aware of that legacy, she has never spoken about it publicly until now.
She became more involved after MyHeritage.com, the company that helps people trace family history, asked if she knew her family’s story.
When she found out she did, MyHeritage unearthed historical documents about Dodd that Roddy says even she and her mother didn’t know existed. They consider eventually turning over some of their artifacts to a museum.
As a child, Roddy said, she loved her great-grandmother very much, visiting her every year and cherishing the poems, books and notes she gave her, including one welcoming her to the world the year she was born. She still keeps it, in pristine condition, in a small box in her home.
But as a child, Roddy says, she largely took Father’s Day for granted, wrapping up the lavish celebration, including the special card for her great-grandmother, was just something her family did. Even as an adult, she’s generally kept quiet about being the ultimate Father’s Day insider, leaving it to her mom to spread the word.
But no more.
“It’s time for me to pick up the baton and wear it with pride,” she says with a smile. “I am the last direct descendant. The legacy is here, that’s an honor.”
___ This story was first published in 2017. Rogers retired from The Associated Press in 2021.
