June 20, 2004
Happy Father's Day!
Happy father's day to my Dad, to Bill, and to any of the rest of you who are Dads celebrating today!
I just learned that the first Father's Day was celebrated in Spokane, Washington on June 19th, 1910. And while President Calvin Coolidge (an Amherst alum) proclaimed the third Sunday in June as Father's Day in 1924, it only became a permanent national observance in 1972 under President Richard Nixon.
The US Census Bureau has a list of facts and figures for father's day, including that they estimate there are 66.3 million fathers in the US today. They also estimate that there are 105,000 “stay-at-home” dads -- including a couple of my friends (hi Mike! hi Paul! hi Peter!) who are staying home to take care of their kids.
Ties are of course associated with Father's Day (but I don't think we ever gave Dad ties since his family had a men's clothing store in Pittsburgh while we were growing up so he had an ample supply of ties). But here's a history of ties that was interesting and a piece about dads on TV.