Page "Father's Day" Paragraph 7

A " Father's Day " service was held on July 5, 1908, in Fairmont, West Virginia, in the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South, now known as Central United Methodist Church.

Grace Golden Clayton was mourning the loss of her father when, on December 1907, the Monongah Mining Disaster in nearby Monongah killed 361 men, 250 of them fathers, leaving around a thousand fatherless children.

Clayton suggested her pastor Robert Thomas Webb to honor all those fathers.

Clayton chose the Sunday nearest to the birthday of her father, Methodist minister Fletcher Golden.