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Harry Meek, past president of Chicago's Uptown Lions Club, is acknowledged as the creator of Father's Day celebration. He promoted the idea through Lions Club speeches and eventually it was adopted. They set the day as the Sunday nearest his birthday which is the third Sunday in June. However, several years before him, in 1908, Dr. Robert Webb conducted what is believed as the first Father's Day service at the Central Church of Fairmont, West Virginia.
Mrs. John Bruce Dodd also promoted the idea of a Fathers Day in commemoration of her own father. As a widower, he raised six children while farming in eastern Washington state. In 1909, she conceived the idea during a Mother's Day service. This prompted her to write a proposal to the Spokane Ministerial Association. The Spokane YMCA also agreed to promote it. In 1910, Spokane became the first city to honor fathers.
Ironically, Spokane was supposed to celebrate its first Father's Day on June 5, 1910, her father's birthday but the local ministers did not have enough time to prepare their sermons. It was pushed back to the nineteenth, the third Sunday in June, the same day selected by the Uptown Lion's club in Chicago.
The holiday continue to gain popularity until it was finally officially established by President Nixon in 1972. | 