The late Sonora Smart Dodd launched the celebration of dads in 1910 in her hometown of Spokane, Washington. As a result, she is the one responsible for those annual gifts that run the gamut from embarrassingly silly-looking neckties to kids' finger paintings crafted with so much love by those tiny hands that they can bring a tear to the eye of even the most stoic father.
It's a tradition Dodd decided to start as she sat in a Spokane church on Mother's Day 1909, listening to a sermon about -- what else? -- Mother's Day.
William Jackson Smart became a farmer after fighting in the Civil War. He not only held down both parental roles but did it with "leadership and love," his daughter always said, and she believed he ought to get some credit. Finally, in 1972, President Richard Nixon declared the third Sunday of June a federal holiday honouring dads. Dodd, who died at age 96 in 1978, had lived to see her dream come true.
Dodd's great-granddaughter inherited some of that spirit herself. Raised in Washington, D.C., she earned a bachelor's degree in English from Penn State before heading to Europe for several years of backpacking between studies at Vienna's Webster University, where she earned a master's degree in international business.
Although she's always been well aware of that legacy, she's never talked about it publicly until now.
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