Author: ekkarn

Father’s Day – A Time to Honor and Remember Dad!

Good Morning World and how is everybody on this fine June 21, 2015. Today Father’s Day is celebrated in the United States and many countries worldwide. So Happy Day to Father’s Everywhere!. The featured photograph at the top of this post in my dad and me at the Trenton State Fair in 195? My Dad Edward Henry Karn, Jr.was born on June 23rd of 1924. This time of year is when I think about my dad  the most, not only because of Father’s Day and his birthday, but because through my high school and colleges years we spent many hours together in the summer. During those years, my dad ran his own trucking business carrying produce mostly corn and peaches to New York and north Jersey. We also delivered peat moss to various landscaping stores throughout South Jersey. Anyway through those years I was his helper and I’ll tell you we worked hard, but then that’s what he did for most of his life! He passed away at the age of 60. like his father, he died of a heart attack. Both of my first two sons were born before he passed away, but since Nick was only five and Andrew two they never really knew him and that of course makes me sad  I know what it like to have only vague memories of your grandfathers since mine passed when I was two and five years old!! Anyway Happy Father”s Day Dad and by the way…….

…..how did Father’s Day start? Well according to Wikipedia the first Father’s Day, may like Mother’s Day, have been held in West Virginia by Grace Golden Clayton! From Wikipedia:

Grace Golden Clayton may have been inspired by Anna Jarvis’ crusade to establish Mother’s Day; two months prior, Jarvis had held a celebration for her dead mother in Grafton, West Virginia, a town about 15 miles (24 km) away from Fairmont.[citation needed]

After the success obtained by Anna Jarvis with the promotion of Mother’s Day in Grafton, West Virginia, the first observance of a “Father’s Day” was held on July 5, 1908, in Fairmont, West Virginia, in the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South, now known as Central United Methodist Church.[1] Grace Golden Clayton was mourning the loss of her father when, on December 1907, the Monongah Mining Disaster in nearby Monongah killed 361 men, 250 of them fathers, leaving around a thousand fatherless children. Clayton suggested her pastor Robert Thomas Webb to honor all those fathers

However the Father’s Day celebration that was held in Spokane, Washington in 1910 was the one that ultimately led to the establishment of the holiday, as we in the US know it……

In 1910, a Father’s Day celebration was held in Spokane, Washington, at the YMCA by Sonora Smart Dodd, who was born in Arkansas.[6] Its first celebration was in the Spokane YMCA on June 19, 1910.[6][7] Her father, the civil war veteran William Jackson Smart, was a single parent who raised his six children there.[6] After hearing a sermon about Jarvis’ Mother’s Day in 1909 at Central Methodist Episcopal Church, she told her pastor that fathers should have a similar holiday honoring them.[6] Although she initially suggested June 5, her father’s birthday, the pastors did not have enough time to prepare their sermons, and the celebration was deferred to the third Sunday of June.[1][8] Several local clergymen accepted the idea, and on 19 June 1910, the first Father’s Day, “sermons honoring fathers were presented throughout the city.

It actually took another 62 years until Father’s Day became a permanent national holiday. Again From Wikipedia:

A bill to accord national recognition of the holiday was introduced in Congress in 1913.[17] In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson went to Spokane to speak in a Father’s Day celebration[18] and wanted to make it official, but Congress resisted, fearing that it would become commercialized.[19] US President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the day be observed by the nation, but stopped short of issuing a national proclamation.[18] Two earlier attempts to formally recognize the holiday had been defeated by Congress.[18][20] In 1957, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith wrote a proposal accusing Congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years while honoring mothers, thus “[singling] out just one of our two parents”.[20] In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day.[19] Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972. Read More

Father’s Day is celebrated on various days of the year around the world. Russia celebrates Father’s Day on February 23rd and Bulgaria on December 26th. The majority of countries that celebrate Father’s Day do so on the third Sunday in June. The two other dates when the most countries celebrate the Day are March 19th and June 21st!

Today I get to say Happy Father’s Day again to my son Andrew whose son Oliver was born last March and to son Peter for the first time. Peter’s daughter Zoe was born in September of 2014. Happy Father’s Dad to two great Dads!!