Missing Out

"There are moments in life where you get married, or you have a child and you wish [your dad] were there," said actress Cate Blanchette after being honored with a start in Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Her dad died of a heart attack when she was 10.

As tragic as Blanchette's loss of her dad when he was 10 is, there is the thought that at least she knew him a bit. Compare her story to that of Rick Ryles, born to a Japanese woman and American soldier who he searched for his entire life. Thanks to a small, classified ad in the Saginaw, Mich., paper he found his family — and learned his father never stopped hoping to see him during his life — but he never met the man himself.

Neither Ryles nor Blanchette got the good, such as having his dad cook for them and the entire school, as Fort Worth chef Tim Love now does for his kids schools. And they never received the discipline like brothers Kip and Cole Russell did when their pop made them stand outside the store from which they shoplifted with orange signs announcing their crime.

Actually, it is unlikely those would have been their experiences. Still they missed out on the nurture and discipline and everything else from a dad that you do and don't appreciate until years later.