| The
Top 15 Favorite TV Dads: |
A
Harris Poll in 2009 asked the question "Who
is America's Favorite TV Dad?" At the top of
the list was the loveable Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable,
Bill Cosby's character on The Cosby Show.
1. Cliff Huxtable of "The Cosby Show"
2. Ward Cleaver of "Leave It to Beaver"
3. Jim Anderson of "Father Knows Best"
4. Andy Taylor of "The Andy Griffith Show"
5. Ozzie Nelson of "The Adventures of Ozzie
and Harriet"
6. Mike Brady of "The Brady Bunch"
7. Howard "Mr. C" Cunningham of "Happy
Days"
8. "Pa" Charles Ingalls of "Little
House on the Prairie"
9. Ben Cartwright of "Bonanza"
10. Tim Taylor of "Home Improvement"
11. Danny Tanner of "Full House"
12. Archie Bunker of "All in the Family"
13. Steve Douglas of "My Three Sons"
14. Homer Simpson of "The Simpsons" and
Al Bundy of "Married with Children" (tie)
More than half of these dads appear in television
shows that aired or were set in the 1960's or earlier.
Also, Homer Simpson is the only dad on the list
that still appears in prime-time. If you find yourself
wondering why your dad is not quite like these dads,
remember that these dads have the help or writers
and scripts, where as your dad needs to make the
difficult task of improve material for Father-of-the-Year! |
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| History
of Father's Day |
|
History
On the third Sunday in June, families in the U.S. and many
other countries will celebrate Father's Day without knowing
the origins; however, many scholars do not know the true beginning
either.
Babylonians are known for many other firsts, but were they
also the first to celebrate Father's Day? Historians found
a 4,000-year-old card made out of clay by a boy named Elmesu.
On the card, there was a wish for good health and a long life
for his father. Many believe that this was the first Father's
Day, but there is no record of what happened to Elmesu and
his father or for the exact occasion for the card.
The next appearance of a Father's Day was in 1908 at a church
in Fairmont, West Virginia. On December 6, 1907, there was
a mining disaster in Monongah, West Virginia, which killed
210 fathers. Grace Golden Clayton learned of what happened
and felt badly for the children who had just lost their fathers,
because she had lost her father a few years earlier and missed
his guidance.
Clayton worked with the reverend of her church, the Williams
Memorial Episcopal Church, South, to organize a service to
honor fathers. The sermon took place on July 5, 1908, the
Sunday closest to her father's birthday.
West Virginia did not officially register the holiday and
the celebration did not happen again. Because of this, the
credit for Father's day is usually given to Sonora Smart Dodd
from Spokane, Washington.
The initial idea for a Father's Day came to Dodd during a
Mother's Day sermon at her church in 1909. Dodd wanted to
honor her father, William Smart, a civil war veteran who raised
six children including Sonora after his wife died giving birth
to their sixth child. Along with local religious leaders,
Dodd organized the first Father's Day celebration to occur
on June 19, 1910, June being the month of William Smart's
birthday.
On June 19, 1910, members of the Spokane YMCA went to church
wearing roses; a red rose honored living fathers, while wearing
a white rose honored a deceased one. Sonora rode through the
town that day to deliver gifts to shut-in fathers.
Even though Mother's Day was being well received, the idea
of celebrating Father's Day was met with criticism and jokes.
Many people feared that it was the start of the creation of
many mindless holidays.
President Woodrow Wilson publicly approved Father's Day in
1916 by going to Spokane to speak at a celebration. He wanted
to make it an official holiday, but congress resisted. Calvin
Coolidge later suggested in 1924 that the entire nation recognize
the holiday, but did not make a national proclamation. It
was not until 1966 when Lyndon Johnson proclaimed Father's
Day to be an official national holiday. Richard Nixon set
the official observance of the holiday to the third Sunday
in June in 1972.
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| Fathers
Day Money, Gifts and Tradition |
|
"Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most
is soap-on-a-rope." - Bill Cosby
One of the reasons the U.S. congress did not make Father's
Day a holiday initially, was because they feared it would
become highly commercialized. In 1999, Father's Day became
the fifth most popular card-sending holiday. People spent
an estimated $95 million dollars on cards. The National Retail
Federation found that people spent $9.4 billion on gifts for
dad in 2009, with the break down being an estimated:
- $1.9 billion on an outing such as dinner or a sports event
- $1.3 billion on clothing
- $1.2 billion on gift cards
- $1 billion on electronics
- $548 million on books or CDs
- $522 million on home improvement items
- $502 million on sporting goods
These gifts and traditions may seem very American, but despite
the cultural differences between the US and the many other countries
that observe Father's Day, these gifts are given universally.
Despite the name of the day referring solely to one's father,
people have recently begun to give gifts to many other men in
their lives. The National Retail Federation conducted a study
and found that 51.1% of people buy gifts for their father, while
28.6% of people purchase gifts for their husbands and the rest
include gifts for sons, grandfathers, and brothers. |
| Fathers
Day Fun Facts and Quotes |
Father's Day is the fifth most popular card-sending holiday,
with an estimated $100 million in card sales. Husbands, grandfathers,
uncles, sons and sons-in-law are honored as well as father.
In 1900, fathers passed on clothing to their sons. Today,
kids wouldn't touch Dad's clothes if they were sliding naked
down an icicle.
In 1900, fathers could count on children to join the family
business. Today, fathers pray their kids will soon come home
from college long enough to teach them how to work the computer
and set the VCR.
|
| What
People say About Father's day: |
"That
is the thankless position of the father in the family-the provider
for all, and the enemy of all."
-J. August Strindberg |
"It
is a wise father that knows his own child."
-William Shakespeare |
"It
doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember
he was."
-Anne Sexton |
"One
father is more than a hundred schoolmasters."
English Proverb |
"My
father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother
would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass."
"We're not raising grass," Dad would reply. "We're
raising boys.""
-Harmon Killebrew |
"When
I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly
stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one,
I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."
-Mark Twain , "Old Times on the Mississippi"
Atlantic Monthly, 1874 |
"There's
something like a line of gold thread running through a man's
words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the
years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands
and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself."
-John Gregory Brown , Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery,
1994 |
"It
would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and
violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the
desire to beget children is a natural urge."
-Phyllis Diller |
"The
greatest gift I ever had came from God; I call him Dad!"
-Author Unknown |
"To
her the name of father was another name for love."
-Fanny Fern |
"My
father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person,
he believed in me."
-Jim Valvano |
"Small
boys become big men through the influence of big men who care
about small boys."
-Anonymous |
"Sometimes
the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance."
-Ruth E. Renkel |
|
"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who
I remember he was."
- Anne Sexton
|
"Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices
call him father!"
-Lydia M. Child |
"I
talk and talk and talk, and I haven't taught people in 50 years
what my father taught by example in one week."
-Mario Cuomo |
| "One
night a father overheard his son pray: Dear God, Make me the
kind of man my Daddy is. Later that night, the Father prayed,
Dear God, Make me the kind of man my son wants me to be."
-Anonymous |
"By
profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I
am prouder - infinitely prouder - to be a father. A soldier
destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys.
The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation
and life. And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions
of life are mightier still. It is my hope that my son, when
I am gone, will remember me not from the battle field but in
the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, 'Our Father
who art in Heaven"
-Douglas Macarthur |
"I
cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need
for a father's protection."
-Sigmund Freud |
"Father!
- to God himself we cannot give a holier name."
-William Wordsworth |
"Henry
James once defined life as that predicament which precedes death,
and certainly nobody owes you a debt of honor or gratitude for
getting him into that predicament. But a child does owe his
father a debt, if Dad, having gotten him into this peck of trouble,
takes off his coat and buckles down to the job of showing his
son how best to crash through it."
- Clarence Budington Kelland |
"
The thing to remember about fathers is... they're men. A girl
has to keep it in mind: They are dragon-seekers, bent on improbable
rescues. Scratch any father, you find someone chock-full of
qualms and romantic terrors, believing change is a threat, like
your first shoes with heels on, like your first bicycle...
- Phyllis McGinley |
|
" If the relationship of father to son could really
be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the
glory of fathers and sons.
- James Baldwin
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" My father hated radio and he could not wait for television
to be invented so that he could hate that too.
- Peter De Vries
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"
Life was a lot simpler when what we honored was father and mother
rather than all major credit cards.
- Robert Orben |
