Many great stories are father issues, mother issues or death.
We are constantly trying to cope with what our fathers or our grandfathers did. I wrote the book 'Great War of Civilization,' and my father was a solider in the First World War which produced the current Middle East - not that he had much to do with that - but he fought in what he believed was the Great War for Civilization.
My mother, twenty-two, was Harriet Gautier Brooks, named for her paternal grandmother, but always called Hallie. My father, twenty-six, was Albert Horton Foote, named for his father and great-grandfather, and I was named Albert Horton Foote, Jr.
My great-grandfather was a kola nut trader and the richest man in West Africa at the time of his death. My father was a businessman and politician. I was actually raised by my grandfather.
My father, John, ran the Dowd Insurance Co. in town, which was started by his great-grandfather. My mother, Dolores, was a homemaker who kept an eye on all of us.
My great-great-grandfather lived to age 28, my immigrant great-grandfather Pedro Gotiaoco died at 66, my grandfather was 68, and my father died at 34.
I would say my greatest achievement in life right now - my greatest achievement period is - and I'm still trying to achieve it - is to be a wonderful father to my kids.
Now, my father Matthias was not only eminent on account of is nobility, but had a higher commendation on account of his righteousness, and was in great reputation in Jerusalem, the greatest city we have.
One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.
The greatest thing my father left me was a love for cutting wood - my love for sawing, especially pine wood.
I remember my father taking us to meeting with lawyers, interviews with immigration officers, doing everything he could to get us that treasured Green Card - and the happiness, the sense of relief, when he finally did - we knew that we were welcome now, and we would be welcome tomorrow.
My father was a golden boy from a very small town. He won a very prestigious law scholarship to NYU Law School, and there in Greenwich Village, he met my mother, who was very young, fresh off the boat from Germany.
My mother is brilliant but emotional and very much gregarious and connected to people. My father was brilliant but focused and driven and very narrow-casted.
For my father, he didn't know what 'Grey's Anatomy' was. He didn't know who John Mayer was. But when I showed up on the 'Law & Order' TNT promo spot, he thought, 'Wow, my son has made it.'
America had taken my father from me. And over most of the years of his illness, I gradually started feeling this support system from this country who-people grieving along with us.
Grissom comes from a place where we know he had a deaf mother, he was raised in a silent household, on some level, had a father who potentially was not around and he learned what he knew by himself in the back yard, with bugs and animals. He's not comfortable being a supervisor and that's his problem.
My father did not groom us for politics. I took the plunge because I wanted to carry on his work in his constituency.
I find the idea of walking down the aisle and then being handed to the groom by the father very romantic.
We know the Lord makes His servants bold. The young boy Joseph who saw God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, in a grove of trees was transformed into a spiritual giant.
A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.
