Blame CT man for Father’s Day ties

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I’m not the first person to think that Father’s Day is just a marketing plot. But I’m ready to prove it.

The short version is that Father’s Day started (like most thoughtful things) with a woman. Sonora Smart Dodd had serious intentions in wanting to honor his father, a Civil War veteran who raised his six children alone after the death of his wife.

Although it was only a local initiative in Spokane, Washington, Dodd knew she needed a sponsor in 1910, so she approached Ray E. Bigelow, who operated a clothing store and was president of the Spokane Advertising Club. Their conversation apparently went like this:

Dodd: I don’t want it all to be about alcohol and cigarettes.

Bigelow: Let me think I know, well, it’s all about ties. It has nothing to do with the fact that I run a clothing store, by the way.

So Bigelow created the slogan Give Dad a tie. More than a century later, ties still have a stranglehold on Father’s Day dad jokes.

It went viral the old fashioned way. Bigelow followed his muse for Go East, Middle-Aged Man and moved to Stamford, Connecticut, in 1931. While Bigelow was working as a sales manager for the Brewster Hat Co, New York, his son James got a gig at Greenwich Time before becoming advertising manager for the CO Miller Co. on Bank Street in Stamford town centre. Dads choked on even more ties on the third Sunday of every June (crepe ties, the ever-popular geometric pattern, or a bat-winged tie, courtesy of CO Miller. Each cost a dollar).

In a 1941 interview with the Stamford Advocate, Bigelow (the father) acknowledged that tie manufacturers would consider it a disaster if the custom of a Father’s Day tie were to be dropped now.

So yeah, it was all a conspiracy.

Yet the Father’s Day timeline appears to have been written by pro-booze and cigarette historians. An early newspaper account identified its founder as Dood, Doods and Dodds (see, copy editors were also rare then).

The lawyer started counting Father’s Day birthdays after estimating that the first official national birthday was in 1923. Has anyone heard that was the 100th annual holiday?

As early as 1914, news articles documented that many had protested that the poor old father could very well worry without a day, but the movement started in Spokane, Washington, five years ago by Mrs. John Bruce Dodd has now been officially recognized by both members of Congress.

Ties aside, it was ancient custom for men to wear roses in their buttonholes, red for living fathers and white for the dead. Others opted for blueberries and dandelions as a symbol of the courage of dear old dad, whose spirit cannot be crushed.

It’s no wonder everyone was confused about Father’s Day. In 1928, an editorial in the Advocate asked for more clarity because no one had told us whether to give the father a carnation or a sock up his nose.

Columnists, always trying to start a fight.

The ad pages, meanwhile, seemed determined to make it to the old man. For Father’s Day cigarettes! Buy dad a box of his favorite cigarettes!

Although the party seemed destined to wear the white rose, it managed to endure. Just like tie promotions. In 1925, the United Necktie Manufacturers of America proclaimed June 21 Father’s Day. For what? Did everyone call him that didn’t count?

The tie impresarios finally had company, as the holiday was also adopted in 1931 by “the Tobacco and Cabbage Dealers, Limited, the Sock Makers Union and the Golf Ball Trust”.

(I trust readers to translate Cabbagio for me. My only guess is stogie.)

Things were a bit more creative in some Gold Coast towns. A female auctioneer in Darien in 1932 offered to reward Dad with a photo of a naked girl.

In 1939, in Bridgeport, the local Chamber of Commerce held a contest rewarding the oldest father with $15 ($10 for second place and $5 for third). Mirror prizes went to the youngest dads.

One of my columnist predecessors suggested a hearty breakfast to me as the perfect Father’s Day gift from 1939: men love: lamb chops, liver and bacon, grilled lamb kidneys, herring kipper with scrambled eggs , cream jerky, butter cakes and finnan haddie cream sausages and, of course, cod cakes

What is there to eat?

In 1943, CO Millers in Stamford pivoted to offer a quartet of photographs of the kiddos for $4.95 ($6 regular). Wherever dad is this year, hell loves photos of his kids, the ad copy suggests, the poignant whisper of an acknowledgment that many dads were on the front lines of World War II.

A list of gift suggestions from business columnists included ice tubs and real, human-sized coffee mugs. If the humble tie has any rivals for cliché FD gifts, it’s the coffee mug. Two years later, a merchant trumpeted the arrival of a shipment from England of oversized coffee mugs with daddy printed on the side ($1.25).

The catalog of gift ideas has grown over the decades. The ultimate gift suggestion probably came in 1963, when the Connecticut Child Welfare Association suggested it wasn’t too early to start thinking about Father’s Day 1964. That’s right, they suggested adopting a child. They even detailed the options as if they were offering Buicks: “Lynette” is described as cheerful and outgoing, a dream babe, with above-average intelligence, medium skin tone, curly hair, and big brown eyes.

By the end of the decade, he had returned to more traditional gifts like recliners. President Richard Nixon’s daughters were more rebellious, giving him a surfboard. Nixon’s spokesman wondered where the hesitant president might stand on the board that bore his name: Probably in the middle neither left nor right.

No wonder Nixon drowned in Watergate (hey, I’m cashing in on my dad’s joke card).

These days, although ties are as frayed as the gags around them, coffee mugs have proven to be tough. A quick search for gift suggestions on Amazon yields deals for mugs with labels of Best Dad Ever (featuring a caricature of Donald Trump) and the dubious Old Lives Matter.

Everything else suggested by Amazon requires batteries. But that’s just another conspiracy.

John Breunig is editorial page editor for the Stamford Advocate and the Greenwich Time. [email protected]; twitter.com/johnbreunig.

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