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The general concensus says that June 19, 1910 marks the first Father's Day  celebrated in the United States, when Sonora Dodd recognized and honored the enormous role her father, William Jackson Smart, played in her life.  A Civil War vet, Mr. Smart was forced to be both parents after losing his wife during the birth of Sonora, their sixth child.

Most of us don't have fathers who were forced to single-handedly raise six children; and most of our fathers are thankful for that.  Regardless of their triumphs or adversities, their victories or obstales, they deserve tribute this Sunday.  In that spirit, I offer these quotes; maybe you'll find one that particularly describes your Dad.

My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn. -- Louis Adamic

If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right. -- Bill Cosby

A new father quickly learns that his child invariably comes to the bathroom at precisely the times when he's in there, as if he needed company. The only way for this father to be certain of bathroom privacy is to shave at the gas station. -- Bill Cosby

I talk and talk and talk, and I haven't taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week. -- Mario Cuomo

I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example." -- Mario Cuomo

A father is a guy who has snapshots in his wallet where his money used to be. -- Unknown

A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma. -- Marlene Dietrich

Lucky that man whose children make his happiness in life and not his grief, the anguished disappointment of his hopes. -- Euripedes

Fifth Commandment: Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. -- Exodus 20:12

My father always told me, 'Find a job you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life.' -- Jim Fox

A father is a banker provided by nature. -- French Proverb

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection. -- Sigmund Freud

If you think about it seriously, all the questions about the soul and the immortality of the soul and paradise and hell are at bottom only a way of seeing this very simple fact: that every action of ours is passed on to others according to its value, of good or evil, it passes from father to son, from one generation to the next, in a perpetual movement. -- Antonio Gramsci

When Charles first saw our child Mary, he said all the proper things for a new father. He looked upon the poor little red thing and blurted, "She's more beautiful than the Brooklyn Bridge". -- Helen Hayes

If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time." -- Russell Hoban

My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, you've had a great life. -- Elbert Hubbard

My father died many years ago, and yet when something special happens to me, I talk to him secretly not really knowing whether he hears, but it makes me feel better to half believe it." --Natasha Josefowitz

My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. -- Clarence Budington Kelland

His mother called such people ignorant and superstitious, but his father only shook his head slowly and puffed his pipe and said that sometimes old stories had a grain or two of truth in them and it was best not to take chances. It was why, he said, he crossed himself whenever a black cat crossed his path. -- Stephen King

When I was a kid, I said to my father one afternoon, 'Daddy, will you take me to the zoo?' He answered, "If the zoo wants you, let them come and get you". -- Jerry Lewis

I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be. -- Abraham Lincoln

My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it. -- Abraham Lincoln

Life was a lot simpler when what we honored was father and mother rather than all major credit cards. -- Robert Orben

None of you can ever be proud enough of being the child of such a Father who has not his equal in this world - so great, so good, so faultless. Try, all of you, to follow in his footsteps and don't be discouraged, for to be really in everything like him none of you, I am sure, will ever be. Try, therefore, to be like him in some points, and you will have acquired a great deal. -- Queen Victoria of England

Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance. -- Ruth E. Renkel

Father taught us that opportunity and responsibility go hand in hand. I think we all act on that principle; on the basic human impulse that makes a man want to make the best of what's in him and what's been given him. -- Laurence Rockefeller

An angry father is most cruel towards himself. -- Publilius Syrus

I just owe almost everything to my father [and] it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election. -- Margaret Thatcher

It's only when you grow up, and step back from him, or leave him for your own career and your own home—it's only then that you can measure his greatness and fully appreciate it. Pride reinforces love. -- Margaret Truman

A man's children and his garden both reflect the amount of weeding done during the growing season. -- Unknown

A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty. -- Unknown

A father is a guy who has snapshots in his wallet where his money used to be. -- Unknown

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong. -- Charles Wadsworth

The roses are for all of our fathers.  Although the red rose was originally meant to honor fathers still living, anyone who's lost a dad knows they still live in our  hearts.

And, now, for a quote from my father:  "I, William F. Manning, Sr., being of sound mind, spent it all."

Happy Father's Day.