Father's Day.

Today is Father's Day, a holiday which we celebrate because of a woman
named Sonora Smart Dodd. One Sunday morning in May of 1909, Dodd was
sitting in church in Spokane, Washington listening to a Mother's Day
sermon. Mother's Day was still a fairly new idea at the time, but it
was catching on quickly all across the United States. Dodd was a mother
herself, so she liked the idea of Mother's Day, but she and all her
siblings had been raised by her father after her mother died in
childbirth. She thought fathers should get recognition too.

She decided to ask the minister at her church if he could deliver a
sermon honoring fathers on her father's birthday, which was coming up
in June. The minister agreed, and the tradition of observing Father's
Day caught on, though not quite as quickly as the tradition of Mother's
Day. Mother's Day became an official holiday in 1914, but Father's Day
wasn't officially recognized until 1972.

Fathers in the United States often get the shorter end of the stick.
Mother's Day is the busiest day of the year for florists, restaurants,
and long distance phone companies. Father's day is the day on which the
most collect phone calls are made.

Robert Frost said, "You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You
have to deserve your father's. He's more particular."