Father's Day founder Sonora Dodd's legacy lives on
Betsy Roddy's family used to send a Father's Day card each year to her great-grandmother, Sonora Dodd.
The unusual practice seemed an obvious tradition to her family: Dodd invented Father's Day.
It was 1909 when Dodd suggested at a Mother's Day church sermon that dads should have their day,
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NZ Herald
21 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Father's Day founder Sonora Dodd's legacy lives on
Betsy Roddy's family used to send a Father's Day card each year to her great-grandmother, Sonora Dodd. The unusual practice seemed an obvious tradition to her family: Dodd invented Father's Day. It was 1909 when Dodd suggested at a Mother's Day church sermon that dads should have their day,
NZ Herald
15-05-2025
- NZ Herald
Art workshop inspires young talents in Gisborne-Tairāwhiti
Art tutor and workshop facilitator Jo Cringle said she was impressed by how motivated the students were and how quickly they worked. They ended up with extra time for drawing after completing their canvases, which was the main task of the day. Children from 17 schools took part in the full-day workshop. Cringle spoke to the students about the fundamentals of colour, including the importance of the colour wheel. They discussed which colours complemented each other before being tasked with creating an acrylic painting that incorporated the environment. Aurora Education Foundation executive director Sunny Bush said the workshop was designed to provide 'arty' students in Years 5 to 8 with an engaging, experimental and immersive experience. 'The programme aims to enhance their creative expression through the vibrant medium of acrylic paints,' she said. The foundation and Cringle have already facilitated three other workshops on the East Coast and in Wairoa this year. 'The tyranny of geographical isolation should not hinder our bright and talented children from missing out on first-class opportunities to develop their skills to a far higher level of performance,' Bush said. 'Aurora is the catalyst to make great things happen for our most promising children.' Sunsets and sunrises, night skies and bold colours featured prominently in the students' work. Some used Māori imagery. Paringatai Liddicoat, from Riverdale School, painted a marae that he had been studying at school. Another student did a special painting to give to her mum for Mother's Day. They were encouraged to find their own styles while developing skills in brushwork and various painting techniques. Annwyn Jia Rose, from Makauri School, said she had a great day and enjoyed meeting other students from different schools who shared her passion for art. Cringle said the children were enthusiastic and it was great that Aurora could provide opportunities that promoted creativity. 'This was our biggest Aurora art programme ever,' Bush said. 'The children produced vibrant and colourful work to an excellent standard, well beyond their wildest expectations.'
Scoop
13-05-2025
- Scoop
Commemorating Mummy: Reflections On Mother's Day
Commercial gimmicks are sometimes impossible to beat off. Their stench and pull follows, even as you look the other way. One occasion is most prominent in this regard. Nostrils get clogged and eyes get fogged, and the message is this: Remember Mommy. Mothers' Day is rarely more than the draw and pull of extracted business and mined guilt. This is the worshipped and leveraged, the human breeder elevated and remembered, if only for one day. It resembles, in some ways, the link between poverty and the church box of charity. Give a few coins and save the child. Your conscience can rest easy. The day itself denigrates the mother in false respect and guilts the family for ignorance to that fact. It sanctifies a family relation for reasons of commercial worth. Suddenly, Mummy escapes her metaphorical sarcophagus, the nursing home, the flat, and finds herself seated at the end of a table with regrets. The hideous spectacle follows. The grumbling, the sneers. Mummy wonders what she is doing there. Monument? Reminder? A disgusting reminder to die off? Thoughts turn to the will. It was not necessarily intended that way. In the aftermath of the American Civil War (1861-65), Julia Ward Howe, author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, proposed that women unite in common cause and promote peace. In time, it would become the Mother's Day Proclamation. In 1908, the idea became more concrete with West Virginian Anna Marie Jarvis's church memorial in honour of her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis. Ann Jarvis had been a committed peace activist aiding wounded soldiers during the Civil War. On May 9, 1914, US President Woodrow Wilson officially announced the establishment of Mother's Day as an occasion of national observance to be annually held on the second Sunday of May. Such observance was to involve the display of the American flag on government buildings and private residences 'as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.' Mother's Day in Australia only took off with Sydney's Janet Heyden, who insisted in 1924 on remembering the aging mothers at Newington State Hospital, many of whom had been widowed by the calamitous slaughter of the First World War. As an activist, she encouraged local schools and businesses to furnish the ladies with donated gifts. In its more modern iteration, it has evolved into a family affair. As Australian historian Richard Waterhouse benignly describes it, 'It's not just about recognising the role of mothers, though that's still there, but it's really recognising Mother's Day as a day in which families can get together.' As with other days of elected memory, Mother's Day draws in the retail and restaurant dollars. Guilty emotions are easy fodder for the capitalist impulse. Unremarkably, it was the United States that propelled its commercialisation, beginning with card companies like Hallmark and enterprising florists keen to make a profit. Jarvis, so instrumental in establishing the tradition, took to loathing it, attacking such marketing gimmicks as 'Mother's Day Salad'. For years, she harangued politicians, organised protests and sought audiences with presidents to arrest the trend towards commodification. Such efforts eventually exhausted her, leading to a lonely, poor death in a sanatorium. Even as the Second World War raged, the scope of merchandise in anticipation of the day burgeoned. An April 1941 issue of New York's Women's Wear Daily notes how 'Mother's Day as a gift event has continued to grow in importance, and is now second only to Christmas'. In Dallas, one Margaret Evans, promotion manager of A. Harris & Co., enthused at the growing number of departments offering gift choices for the occasion. These included bags, gloves, hosiery, handkerchiefs, toiletries, and jewellery. Eventually, women's libbers cottoned on to the idea that a commemorative occasion supposedly emphasising the importance of mothers had been hijacked and shamelessly exploited. In 1971, a pamphlet issued by the Adelaide women's liberationists suggested that the woman remained invisible, a chained martyr to the home, a slave to domestic chores and the cult of domesticity. Mother's Day was that one occasion of the year that a woman's invaluable role in the home was acknowledged, and even then, only imperfectly. Such a mother's 'basic needs', including a degree of independence from their children, remained unmet. But the pamphlet went further, arguing that women 'renounce [their] martyrdom' and reenvisage themselves as human beings and 'not just 'mum'.' The nexus with children was also a point of comment in that decade. Radical feminist Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, took solid aim at the distorting role played by parenting, and mothering, in the formation of children. Implicit in her argument was that both the mother and the child needed emancipation. It remains a pertinent point, even as the swamp of commercialisation looks deeper than ever.
