Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd thought of the holiday one Sunday in 1909 while listening to a Mother's Day sermon at a church in Washington, and she was the first to promote the idea of having an official Father's Day observance to honor all fathers. It took many years to make the holiday official. Where Mother's Day was met with enthusiasm, Father's Day was met with laughter. The holiday initially gathered attention slowly, but the wrong reasons: it was the target of much satire, parody, derision, and inspired jokes in the local newspaper. A bill was introduced in 1913, President Coolidge supported the idea in 1924, and a national committee was formed in the 1930s by trade groups in order to legitimize the holiday. It was not officially recognized as a holiday until 1972 during Nixon's administration.
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