Families across the nation will come together this weekend to honor their paternal progenitor. Beginning as a daughter’s simple idea to celebrate her loving father more than a century ago, Father’s Day has become a permanent nationally observed day and a billion-dollar industry.

The idea of Father’s Day as it is celebrated today is credited to a young woman who lived in Spokane, Wash. According to historians, Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish a day of recognition for male parents in 1909. Dodd, apparently, called on churches, the YMCA, local shopkeepers and even government officials to raise support for her idea. And she was successful.

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