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This Father's Day, Betsy Roddy is going to write two cards: one for her father and the other for her great-grandmother, Sonora Smart Dodd .
The second card is a family tradition that has been carried out for a century and pays homage to the woman who instituted Father's Day is the United States and much of Latin America .
Dodd decided to honor fathers in 1909, during a religious service in Spokane, Washington , on Mother's Day .
"Something bothered her," says his great-granddaughter, a cheerful 55-year-old woman living in Los Angeles. "She wondered why there was no Father's Day."
Dodd and his five younger siblings, after all, had been raised by their father after their mother's death during her last childbirth in 1898.
Their father, William Jackson Smart , worked on the field after fighting in the civil war. He became father and mother and filled his children with love, said his daughter. He deserved recognition.
"(Dodd) He worked tirelessly with the local priests and secured the support of the Christian Youth Association until the first Father's Day was instituted in Spokane in 1910," Roddy said while showing a copy of The River Press diary from Fort Benton, Montana , who reported the event.
The article predicted that the celebration would spread to the whole country in a year, but it took much longer. So much so that Dodd spent 62 years talking to everyone, from traders to presidents, to support the initiative.
It wasn't until 1972 that President Richard Nixon declared the third Sunday of June a national holiday to pay homage to fathers. Dodd, who died in 1978 at age 96, finally saw her dream come true.
Dodd's great-granddaughter had never spoken in public about her great-grandmother's role in creating Father's Day.
She became aware of it when she signed up at MyHeritage.com, the firm that helps people discover the history of their family.
MyHeritage found historical documents about Dodd that Roddy claims neither she nor her mother knew existed.
As a child, Roddy says, she loved her great-grandmother very much, visited her every year, and enjoyed her poems, her books, and the notes she wrote to her, including one she wrote when she was born. She still keeps it, in immaculate condition, in a small box.
Roddy says it's time for her, not her mother, to keep alive the story of the creation of Father's Day on behalf of her great-grandmother.
Most of Latin America followed the United States and celebrated Father's Day on the third Sunday of June. The exceptions are Brazil (second Sunday in August), Bolivia, Honduras (both March 19), Guatemala, El Salvador (June 17), Dominican Republic (last Sunday in July), Uruguay (second Sunday in July) and Nicaragua (June 23).
Bolivians and Hondurans follow the European tradition, where the feast of Saint Joseph, the father of Jesus , is celebrated.
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