SPOKANE, Wash.— The city of Spokane in Washington is the birthplace of Father’s Day. It started in the craftsman-style home known as the “Father’s Day House,” or the Dodd House.
A Spokane resident named Sonora Louise Smart Dodd was inspired to dedicate a day to fathers while listening to a Mother’s Day sermon at a church in 1909.
Her father, William Smart, was a Civil War veteran who raised Dodd and her five younger brothers after her mom died during childbirth.
A sign stating that the Dodd House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2010. (Ilene Eng/NTD Television)
“The idea, I think, of having a single father in those years with six small children … it was really important to her that he be recognized for all that he did,” Kirstin Davis, communications manager for the City of Spokane, told NTD Television….