On a warm June afternoon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the streets were filled with the familiar sights and sounds of a Pride celebration: colorful flags, music, laughter, signs, costumes and thousands of people gathering to celebrate LGBTQ+ identity and community.
But amid the excitement, one man carried a remarkably simple message.
“Free Dad Hugs.”
Scott “Howie” Dittman, a father from Karns City, Pennsylvania, had not come to deliver a political speech or make a grand public statement. He had come with something much simpler to offer: an embrace.
He had no idea just how many people would need one.
Over the course of roughly two and a half hours at the 2019 Pittsburgh Pride parade, Dittman said he gave more than 700 hugs. Some were quick and cheerful. Others lasted much longer. Some people laughed when they approached him. Others cried. A few appeared to be overwhelmed by the emotional significance of being embraced by a stranger who was deliberately offering them the kind of parental affection they had been denied.
What Dittman initially imagined as a small gesture of kindness became something much larger.
It became a reminder of how deeply a parent's acceptance can matter—and how painful its absence can be.
A Simple Idea
Dittman did not originally set out to become a symbol of parental acceptance.
According to CNN and CBS News, he learned that a friend was planning to attend Pittsburgh Pride with Free Mom Hugs, a movement centered on offering support and affection to LGBTQ+ people. Dittman decided that he could contribute something of his own.
He ordered a shirt.
The message was straightforward:
“FREE DAD HUGS.”
Then he drove from his home in Karns City to Pittsburgh for the Pride celebration on June 9, 2019.
Dittman later explained that he had wondered whether LGBTQ+ people might particularly need support from fathers.
His reasoning was personal rather than clinical. He imagined that if someone had been rejected by a parent, a hug from another dad might provide a small moment of comfort.
He did not know just how powerful that gesture would become.
At first, he expected to make people smile.
Instead, he encountered people carrying years—even decades—of pain.
The First Hug Changed Everything
One of the earliest encounters helped Dittman understand that the day would be very different from what he had imagined.
According to his account to CBS News and CNN, a woman approached him with tears already in her eyes. She embraced him and repeatedly thanked him.
Dittman did not immediately know her story.
He simply held on.
He later described realizing that he was not going to be the first person to let go.
That moment became a turning point.
The shirt was no longer just a playful message.
For some people, it represented something they had been missing.
A father's approval.
A parent's embrace.
The reassurance that they were not fundamentally unworthy of love.
From there, the hugs continued.
Hundreds of people approached.
Some simply wanted a friendly hug during a celebration. Others appeared to carry something much heavier into the embrace.
Dittman began to see a pattern.
People could be laughing with friends one moment, enjoying the parade and celebrating the day, and then suddenly break down when they saw the words “Free Dad Hugs.”
As he later told CBS News, it could seem as though a switch had been flipped.
A Hug That Represented Years of Absence
One encounter in particular stayed with Dittman.
A man who had been rejected by his parents decades earlier approached him.
The man's story, as Dittman later learned, was devastatingly simple.
His parents had discovered that he was gay when he was 19. They expelled him from their lives, and he had reportedly gone nearly three decades without speaking to them.
Then, in the middle of a Pride celebration filled with music and happiness, he saw a stranger wearing a shirt that offered something as ordinary as a father's hug.
He broke down.
CNN's interview with Dittman captured the emotional weight of that encounter. Dittman recalled the man crying intensely during the embrace and later learning that his parents had effectively cut him off when he was a teenager.
It was a striking contrast.
The Pride parade was supposed to be a celebration.