Happy Father's Day!

[Eva Elisabeth]

Happy Father's Day #3 for this year - that's interesting. While Mother's Day is the same day everywhere, Father's Day is not. In Germany it's always on Ascension Day (hence a Thursday but public holiday), Austria celebrated its fathers last Sunday and now the US...

[Thomas Kearney]

Thanks Eva. While I'm not a dad, I know there are some dads on this forum and wanted to share this song not only for my dad, but for dads everywhere:

https://vimeo.com/131362545?ref=tw-share

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thomas, for some reason I suspect you'd like German Father's Day - the fathers walk the countryside pulling self-constructed carts that provide BBQ and other restorers.
http://www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/medi...al1024.jpg

[HerbS]

Happy father's day-everyone!

[Thomas Kearney]

(06-18-2017 11:17 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Thomas, for some reason I suspect you'd like German Father's Day - the fathers walk the countryside pulling self-constructed carts that provide BBQ and other restorers.
http://www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/medi...al1024.jpg

As a son I would, but as a dad, I'll count that as going to the gym for the day!

[Gene C]

Thanks Thomas, my two grown sons live out of town so I didn't get to see them today.
Your post was extra special to me and very thoughtful. Thank you

[Thomas Kearney]

(06-18-2017 04:17 PM)Gene C Wrote:  Thanks Thomas, my two grown sons live out of town so I didn't get to see them today.
Your post was extra special to me and very thoughtful. Thank you

Thanks Gene!

---

I spent today with my dad at a baseball game. We participated in an on field relay race where sons had to crabwalk to our dads and our dads crabwalk to the finish line. I was the king of crabwalk junior year in PE but not today. And now to reveal the Illinois boy I get my thinning hairline from:

https://twitter.com/ThomasE_Kearney/stat...0140453888

PS> I stuck my tongue out to A. Be silly and B. since he still gives me a hard time about the Fall Classic by wearing that hat, I thought I'd give the universal signal for "We'll sweep you guys in July and win the World Series".

[L Verge]

(06-18-2017 10:31 AM)Thomas Kearney Wrote:  Thanks Eva. While I'm not a dad, I know there are some dads on this forum and wanted to share this song not only for my dad, but for dads everywhere:

https://vimeo.com/131362545?ref=tw-share

This song is credited to Kevin Sockwell. A Kevin Sockwell (who looks just like this Kevin's photo) has attended the Surratt conferences for several years. Could it possibly be the same man? Member of this forum?

No matter who it is, this is a great song -- and now I really miss my dad, who departed this life in 1979 (five days before Christmas).

[Eva Elisabeth]

Same here - I have fond memories of a time so long ago it feels like it was in another life or dream (my father died in 1982).

[RJNorton]

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there!

[David Lockmiller]

I thought there might be those interested in reading this story with some relation to the Civil War.

The Civil War veteran and single dad who inspired Father’s Day
By Gillian Brockell
June 20, 2021 at 4:00 a.m. PDT

The story begins as follows:

The sermon that morning must have stung a bit. Sonora Smart Dodd sat in the pews of Central Methodist Episcopal Church in Spokane, Wash., on May 9, 1909, as her pastor extolled the virtues of mothers. Mother’s Day had only been invented the year before in Grafton, W.Va., but it had already spread across the nation.

Dodd’s mother had died in childbirth 11 years before, when Dodd was a teenager. Now pregnant herself, perhaps the sermon brought up difficult emotions.

Afterward, she later recounted, she approached the pastor and told him, maybe with a little defensiveness, “I liked everything you said about motherhood, but don’t you think father should have a special day, too?”

William Jackson Smart was a farmer, an Arkansas native who had fought for the Union during the Civil War. He and his wife Ellen had moved West when Sonora was a child, and they continued growing their family. When she died in 1898, she left William with six kids, ranging in age from 16 to a newborn.

In a 1964 interview, she said her dad assumed both the father and mother roles. “This role he performed with courage and selflessness until we were all in homes of our own,” she said, according to the Spokesman-Review.

What may have been a passing thought for some, Dodd soon turned into reality. She circulated a petition around town and then got the support of the local YMCA and the Spokane Ministerial Association. On June 19, 1910, the Protestant churches of Spokane observed their first Father’s Day. There were fatherhood-themed sermons, and churches awarded bouquets to men who were the oldest men in the congregation, or the father with the most children, or with the youngest child.

[Note: I have not read any more of the story at this point. But I would like to say this: The father achieved a lot in his lifetime with courage and fortitude.]