Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives,

100 years ago

Spokane was celebrating the first Father’s Day (discussed elsewhere in today’s paper), and Carr’s Department Store became the first store to create an ad around this novel new day.

Carr’s ran an ad with the headline “This Is ‘Father’s Day,’ So Let Us Fittingly Observe It.” The ad included a poem paying homage to fathers who have “passed into the great beyond.”

It also offered a prayer that it suggested all sons and daughters should start the day with: “Father, I will devotedly give you my thoughts of deepest affection because thou has been true to the instincts decreed by the Eternal Law; hast nobly fulfilled the duties which our Heavenly Father has graciously bestowed upon thee. For this is my ‘Father’s Day.’”

The ad did not tout any gift-buying suggestions for Dad, although that was for a very good reason. Carr’s was strictly a women’s clothing store. Its subtitle was “The Women’s Store.”

The idea of making commercial hay off Father’s Day was still in the future.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1862: Slavery was outlawed in U.S. territories.… 1953: Julius Rosenberg, 35, and his wife, Ethel, 37, convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, were executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, N.Y.… 1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved by the Senate, 73-27.