Father's Day and
Henry Jackson Smart

Patience as a Christian Virtue:

As a preface, Hymn #244 in Evangelical Lutheran Worship Book (“Rejoice, Rejoice,
Believers! ”) begins its third verse with:

“The saints, who here in patience, their Cross and suff’rings bore. . . ”

Somehow, we seem to ignore “Patience” as a Christian virtue — perhaps because “Impatience” seems to crowd out its opposite in our society. Yet, “Patience” does come up 34 times in 22 books of the New Testament as a virtue.

Henry Jackson Smart, a Civil War Veteran from Spokane, Washington, seems to have epitomized this virtue. At the time of delivery of his wife’s 6th child, sadly Mrs. Smart died in childbirth. Her husband went on to raise the infant and his other 5 children by himself on a rural farm in eastern Washington state, an incredible example of patience and determination.

In 1910 his daughter, Sonora Louise Smart Dodd, was in church listening to a “Mother’s Day” Sermon. “Why not honor fathers too?” Mrs. Dodd thought, “after all, my father did so much for my brothers, sisters and me.”

That day, Sonora Dodd embarked on a mission to establish a Father’s Day. At first it was to occur on June 9th, Henry Smart’s birthday, but because of the time needed to organize a celebration, it was pushed back to the 3rd Sunday of June 1910. The “Third Sunday in June” idea stuck. In 1924 Calvin Coolidge proclaimed the 3rd Sunday in June as Father’s Day; in 1966 Lyndon Johnson signed a Presidential Proclamation confirming this; and in 1972 Richard Nixon made it a permanent national observance.

In the early times of “Father’s Day,” similar to the custom of Mother’s Day, Roses (in place of carnations) were worn — red to honor living fathers and white to honor those who were not.

On Father’s Day, reflect on the “patience” of Henry Jackson Smart, as well as on the “patience” our own fathers showed by their determination to care for us — their children.