The Los Angeles Dodgers will join the rest of Major League Baseball in marking Father’s Day by raising funds for prostate cancer research and awareness while the foundation founded by a former judge on “Divorce Court” will honor unsung fathers today.
All players, managers, coaches, trainers, umpires and groundskeepers at today’s game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Dodger Stadium and throughout Major League Baseball will promote prostate cancer awareness and show their support by wearing blue wristbands and blue ribbon uniform decals.
Blue lineup cards will be used and bases will have a blue ribbon logo.
Today’s games mark the conclusion of the Prostate Cancer Foundation’s 18th annual Home Run Challenge where fans can make a monetary pledge for each home run hit during all Major League Baseball games from last Sunday through today.
Pledges can be made at www.homerunchallenge.org.
More information about the program can be found at www.MLBCommunity.com or www.pcf.org.
The Mablean Ephraim Foundation will conduct its 12th annual H.U.F Awards at the Hilton Long Beach. The awards honor fathers in five categories who play a vital role in the development of their children’s lives.
Ephraim said the awards were inspired by her 1999-2006 stint on the syndicated courtroom series “Divorce Court,” hearing actual cases involving feuding parents.
The categories are “Solo Warrior,” the father who never married the child’s mother and is the primary custodial parent; “Love Cares,” the married father living in the home; “Fatherhood Forever,” billed as “the divorced father who divorced the mother, not the children”; “The Village Dad,” the non-biological father who stepped into the shoes of the father; and “The Living Legacy,” an elderly father who serves as the role model for other fathers.
The winners are nominated by their children, wives, ex-wives, parents, siblings, other relatives, friends, co-workers and others who know and admire their great qualities.
Nominees are primarily from Los Angeles County.
Father’s Day was the subject of President Barack Obama’s weekly address Saturday, underscoring the crucial role fathers play in our society.
“Every chance I get, I encourage fathers to get more involved in their children’s lives, because what makes you a man isn’t the ability to have a child — it’s the courage to raise one,” Obama said.
Obama also reminded listeners and viewers “government can’t play the
primary role in a young person’s life” and “no government program can ever take the place of a parent’s love.”
Father’s Day began when Sonora Smart Dodd wanted to honor her father, William Jackson Smart, a single parent who raised six children in Spokane, Wash. She initially suggested June 5, the anniversary of his death.
However, when that date would not provide organizers with enough time to make arrangements, the first Father’s Day was celebrated in 1910 in Spokane on the third Sunday in June.
In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge recommended Father’s Day be a national holiday.
In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed Father’s Day as a holiday to be celebrated on the third Sunday in June, while President Richard Nixon signed a bill into law to do so in 1972.
