Fathers

President Obama, who barely knew his own father, devoted his afternoon Friday to promoting the importance of being a good dad, saying he wanted to start a "national conversation" on the subject. Two days before Father's Day, Obama attended events related to fatherhood -- gathering famous and not-so-famous dads for a series of service projects around Washington and a White House town hall meeting, then addressing young men on the South Lawn.

The son watched his father, vowing not to repeat his mistakes. The weekend before George W. Bush defeated Texas Gov. Ann Richards in 1994, he stood in the backyard of his Dallas home hitting tennis balls into the swimming pool for his dog to fetch and ruminating about the future with his media strategist, Don Sipple.

A pot of coffee brews inside the one-story home on Seth Dvorin Lane, as the father of a dead American soldier salutes his son's picture, and sets out to keep his memory alive another day. His one-level weathered home sits on a street named after Army 2nd Lt. Seth Dvorin, 24, killed by a roadside bomb near Iskandariyah, Iraq, on Feb. 3, 2004.

QUEENS, N.Y. -- Alec Baldwin was tossing around a football on the sidewalk outside a Marriott Hotel in Long Island City while crew members of the TV show "30 Rock" were setting up. Baldwin was light on his feet, joking with the crew and happily posing for a photograph with a wandering fan.

A man described as distraught over marital troubles stabbed his two young daughters and himself to death in the parking lot of a Montclair church Wednesday afternoon, authorities said. Montclair police said the father made final phone calls to family members early in the afternoon -- including one in which he told his estranged wife to "say goodbye" to the children -- before committing the double murder and suicide. Police were called to the scene about 1:15 p.m.

Life for Pat O'Brien has long revolved around the General Motors assembly line in Oshawa, Canada, where he has worked for decades. This is also Toronto Maple Leafs territory, where the main highway hugs the shore of Lake Ontario. So, when he wasn't working, yes, hockey took over. O'Brien shuttled his son, Shane, to and from hundreds of practices and games -- long car rides through snow, rain and ice, as the youngster ascended the youth hockey ranks, dreaming of the NHL.

Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time, but this may top them all. In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist said he had snorted his father's ashes mixed with cocaine. "The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME. "He was cremated, and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared," he said.

Parents are the great undiscovered country, a vast uncharted landscape that endlessly tantalizes by being so close and yet so far away. You can listen carefully to every story your parents tell, but in the end, because they existed long before you entered the picture, there are parts of their lives you'll never know. Lucinda Franks was irritated by her father's grim silences.

As the westbound Amtrak streaked across the sun-splashed plains of Kansas, John Jacobson finally talked about his sons -- the good one, and the other one. He was headed to Kingman, Ariz., to pass along the family business to his younger son, an 18-year-old who had just beaten a drug problem and had found new hope in religion.