Scholars believe that Father’s Day can be traced in the ruins of Babylon. They have recorded that a young boy called Elmesu carved a Father’s Day message on a card made out of clay nearly 4,000 years ago. Elmesu wished his father good health and a long life. Though there is no record of what happened to Elmesu and his father but the tradition of celebrating Father’s Day remained in several countries in the world.

The modern version of Father’s Day originating in the US, is a secular one and is celebrated in a large number of countries around the world including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Norway and India though on different dates. World over people take Father’s Day as an opportunity to thank father and pay tribute to them.

The idea came from Ms Sonora Louise Smart Dodd, a loving daughter from Spokane, Washington as she listened to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909. Sonora thought if there is a day to honor mother then why not for father? She felt strongly for fathers because of the affection she received from her own father Mr William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran. Sonora’s mother died in childbirth when she was 16. Mr. Smart raised the newborn and five other children with love and care.

Inspired by Ms Anna Jarvis’s struggle to promote Mother’s Day, Ms Dodd began a rigorous campaign to celebrate Father’s Day. The Spokane Ministerial Association and the local YMCA supported Sonora’s cause. As a result Spokane celebrated its first Father’s Day on June 19, 1910.

Looking at the popularity Father’s Day was gaining, President Woodrow Wilson approved of the idea in 1916. President Calvin Coolidge supported the idea of a national Father’s Day in 1924 to, “establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations”. In 1966, Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June as Father’s Day. In 1972, Richard Nixon established the permanent national observance of Father’s Day. Sonora Smart Dodd was honored at the World’s Fair in Spokane in 1974. Mrs. Dodd died in 1978 at age 96.