TRIVIA:
QUOTES:
CHUCKLES/BELLY
LAUGHS & GROANERS
TRIVIA:
Father's Day
The idea of Father's
Day was conceived in Spokane, Washington by Sonora Dodd while she listened
to a Mother's Day sermon in 1909.
Dodd (now known
as "the mother of Father's Day") wanted a special day to honor her father,
William Smart, a widowed Civil War veteran who was left to raise his six
children on a farm.
The following year,
June 19, 1910 was chosen for the first Father's Day celebration, proclaimed
by Spokane's mayor because it was the month of William Smart's birth.
Decades later, the
first presidential proclamation honoring fathers was issued in 1966 when
President Lyndon Johnson designated the third Sunday in June as Father's
Day. Father's Day has been celebrated annually since 1972 when President
Richard Nixon signed the public law that made it permanent.
Father's
Day by the Numbers
This is a big day
for the 66.3 million fathers in America.
Nearly 95 million
Father’s Day cards were given last year in the United States, making Father’s
Day the fourth-largest card-sending occasion.
Sons and daughters
send 50 percent of the Father's Day card to their dads. Nearly 20
percent of Father’s Day cards are purchased by wives for their husbands.
That leaves 30 percent of the cards which go to grandfathers, sons, brothers,
uncles and “someone special.” While not everyone in America is a fan of
Father's Day, 72 percent of Americans plan to celebrate or acknowledge
Father’s Day.
Gifts
for Father's Day
Neckties are an
old standby and lead the list of Father’s Day gifts. A good place
to buy dad a tie or a shirt might be one of 9,189 men’s clothing stores
around the country.
Other items high
on the list of Father’s Day gifts include those items you may find in dad’s
toolbox such as hammers, wrenches and screwdrivers. You could buy
some of these items for dad at one of the nation’s 14,864 hardware stores
or 5,795 home centers.
Other traditional
gifts for dad such as fishing rods and golf clubs make for a happy Father's
Day for the 22,410 sporting goods stores in America.
More than 68 million
Americans participated at a barbecue in the last year — it’s probably safe
to assume many of these barbecues took place on Father’s Day.
Mr.
Mom
Mr. Mom is
becoming a more common sight at parks across America with 147,000 estimated
“stay-at-home” dads. These married fathers with children under 15
years old have remained out of the labor force for more than one year primarily
so they can care for the family while their wives work outside the home.
These fathers cared for 268,000 children under 15.
The dads seem to
stay home more with younger children. Preschoolers claim 20 percent
of fathers with employed wives who were the primary caregiver for their
preschooler. In contrast, only 6 percent of fathers provided the
most hours of care for their grade-school-aged child.
Many families split
the responsibility of child care. Many Dad's (32%) with full time
jobs regularly worked evening or night shifts and were the primary source
of care for their preschoolers during their children’s mother’s working
hours.
~ Data from
the US Census ~
QUOTES:
The greatest gift
I ever had
Came from God;
I call him Dad!
~Author Unknown
A father is always
making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns
her back again.
~Enid Bagnold
It is not flesh
and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.
~Johann Schiller
A father carries
pictures where his money used to be.
~Author Unknown
He didn't tell me
how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
~Clarence Budington
Kelland
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
One father is more
than a hundred Schoolemasters.
~George Herbert,
Outlandish Proverbs, 1640
Fatherhood is pretending
the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.
~Bill Cosby
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
Blessed indeed is
the man who hears many gentle voices call him father!
~Lydia M. Child,
Philothea: A Romance, 1836
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
Dad, you're someone
to look up to no matter how tall I've grown.
~Author Unknown
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 kills you to
see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.
~Barbara Kingsolver,
Animal Dreams
Making the decision
to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your
heart go walking around outside your body.
~Elizabeth Stone
Never raise your
hand to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected.
~Red Buttons
I don't care how
poor a man is; if he has family, he's rich.
~M*A*S*H, Colonel
Potter
Dad, your guiding
hand on my shoulder will remain with me forever.
~Author Unknown
Spread the diaper
in the position of the diamond with you at bat. Then fold second
base down to home and set the baby on the pitcher's mound. Put first
base and third together, bring up home plate and pin the three together.
Of course, in case of rain, you gotta call the game and start all over
again. ~Jimmy Piersal, on how to diaper a baby, 1968