What is the name of the woman who founded Father's Day?

Sonora Smart Dodd was the woman who founded Father’s Day as an American holiday.

Dodd was inspired by her father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran who raised six children after becoming a widower. While listening to a sermon about Mother’s Day in Spokane, Washington, she concluded that fathers deserved a similar tribute. In 1909, she presented the idea to Spokane’s ministerial alliance.

Dodd first proposed June 5, her father’s birthday, but local ministers selected the third Sunday in June to allow more preparation. Spokane held the first observance associated with Dodd’s campaign on June 19, 1910, at the YMCA. The idea spread gradually despite early resistance and jokes that it was mainly a retail invention.

A common historical complication is a 1908 fathers’ service in Fairmont, West Virginia, organized by Grace Golden Clayton. Dodd is nevertheless widely credited with founding the official American Father’s Day tradition that became nationally recognized.