Want to appear really smart this Sunday?

When you stand before the Father figure in your life next Sunday, wear a huge smile and wrap it in a hug, and say: “Daddy, (Pops, Dad, or Whatever love language you use to talk to your Father), I need to tell how special today is.”

In 1910, a Spokane, Washington, woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents. She was successful: Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on June 19, 1910.

Slowly, the holiday spread. In 1916, President Wilson honored the day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Washington, D.C.

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day.

During the Great Depression, struggling retailers and advertisers redoubled their efforts to make Father’s Day a “second Christmas” for men, promoting goods such as neckties, hats, socks, pipes and tobacco, golf clubs and other sporting goods, and greeting cards.

When World War II began, advertisers began to argue that celebrating Father’s Day was a way to honor American troops and support the war effort. By the end of the war, Father’s Day was a national institution.

In 1972, in the middle of a hard-fought presidential re-election campaign, Richard Nixon signed a proclamation making Father’s Day a federal holiday at last.

OR, you can say,

“Dad, for all those times I left it unsaid, Thank You! For being there, for showing me the way, even when I didn’t make it easy, Thank You! For believing in me and encouraging me to dream, and for being such an inspiring presence in my life, Thank You!”

Follow with a big juicy hug!

This may work, and feel even better!

    Until next time, remember,

• You are not alone.

• You are not your circumstances.

• You have everything within you to live a purpose-filled life.