Saluting Our Founding Fathers

        Ever since Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, organized the first Father's Day celebration on June 19, 1910, to show how much she appreciated her father, William Smart, a single father, and a Civil War veteran left to raise six children on a rural farm by himself, families slowly began to take up the tradition. 
        Calvin Coolidge supported the plan of having a national holiday in 1926; in 1956, Father's Day was recognized by a Joint Resolution of Congress; President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed Father�s Day to be a national holiday in 1966; and in 1972, President Richard Nixon signed into the law having Father�s Day officially celebrated on the third Sunday of June.
        According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 64.3 million fathers nationwide.
        In honor of this special day, The Morning Delivery salutes some of our founding fathers
 
Such as:
 
The Father of the Constitution
James Madison, wrote a significant part the constitution at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, believed in separation of church and state, and a strong federal government
 
The Father of Journalism,
Woodward & Bernstein, Dave Barry, Herodotus, considered the first foreign correspondent who reported the fifth-century BC engagement between the Greeks and the Persians.
 
Father of the Internet:
Al Gore, Philip Emeagwali, developed a formula in 1989 using 65,000 separate computer processors to perform 3.1 billion calculations per second.
 
Father of Baseball:
Abner Doubleday, Al Spalding, Peter Gammons�Alexander Cartwright, a member of the Knickerbocker Baseball Club of New York City in 1845, developed the first rules of the game
 
Father of the Comic Strip?
Swiss artist Rodolphe Tpffer , beginning in 1827, draws a series of cartoons with handwritten texts which are first published in 1833, and then published collectively in Histoires en Estampes in 1846
NOTE: The New York Daily Telegraph was the first American newspaper to feature a comic strip beginning September 11, 1875 called �Professor Tigwissel's Burglar Alarm�. The New York World was the first to feature Sunday comics in 1893.
 
Father of Rock 'n' Roll
Meat Loaf, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, according to Dick Clark
 
The Father of the Blog
Perez Hilton, Matt Drudge, Les Earnest, a Stanford University professor, who also developed the first spell checker, invented the "finger" utility in the early 1970s, as an idea to let people know you were going to be on vacation. The concept soon paved the way for people to post personal diaries.
 
Father of the Necktie
Jesse Langsdorf in 1924
 
Father of the Blackberry
Mike Lazaridis, 1999
 
Father of Controversial Talk Radio
Don Imus, Howard Stern, Father Charles E. Coughlin, who began broadcasting in 1926 over WJR in Detroit, MI. The Catholic priest became one of the most controversial voices heard on the airwaves, unleashing anti-Semitic remarks, and vicious attacks at Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal policies. At the height of his popularity, one third of the nation was thought to have listened to his weekly broadcasts, according to the Social Security Administration�s website.
The Catholic Church took him off the air in 1940 and returned him to parish work.
 
***
The Morning Delivery wishes a Happy Father�s Day to all you papa bears; and as Frank Sinatra would often like to say: ``To all you mudda�s! out there, Happy Mudda�s Day!''

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]