In 1910 Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, organized the first Father's Day celebration on June 19, her own father's birthday. The mayor of Spokane and the governor of Washington state officially supported the event. Dodd's father, a farmer and Civil War veteran, had been a single father to six young children after the death of his wife.
In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed Father's Day to be an official national holiday. And in 1972 President Richard Nixon signed into law a permanent U.S. Father's Day to be observed on the third Sunday of June.