Proclamation 5642

by Ronald Reagan

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

By tradition, Americans celebrate the third Sunday in June as Father's Day in honor of the immense and indispensable contributions fathers make to our lives and to our Nation. They deserve our thanks and recognition every day of the year and especially on Father's Day.

Fatherhood is all about the things that matter most-about love and new life, about trust and responsibility, about faithfulness to a family and to a calling. Fathers must be many things, but most of all they must be selfless. Fathers seek to give their children a share of the world's goods and an even greater share of its goodness; they must have the skill and strength to see to the immediate needs of their families and the wisdom to see to their children's lifelong need for character and conviction. They anxiously strive to impart to their sons and daughters a sense of their heritage and a notion of their obligations to one another and to the future.

Fathers take on these tasks out of love, and for their wages they want most the love and honor of their children and the respect of their community. With these, they can find peace and joy in the midst of the daily hardships and frustrations they face as parents and providers. What fathers do for their families, they do for our country as well, because the strong and loving families they help create are the soul of a nation. For all that fathers do, we show our heartfelt thanks and offer our love and prayers on the day every father can call his own.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, in accordance with a joint resolution of the Congress approved April 24, 1972 (36 U.S.C. 142a), do hereby proclaim Sunday, June 21, 1987, as Father's Day. I invite the States and communities and people of the United States to observe that day with appropriate ceremonies as a mark of appreciation and abiding affection for their fathers. I direct government officials to display the flag of the United States on all Federal government buildings, and I urge all Americans to display the flag at their homes and other suitable places on that day.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-eighth day of April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and eleventh.

RONALD REAGAN

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 10:45 a.m., April 29, 1987]