When my mother and father died, Chef cooked food just like what we're enjoying here today.

My father's life was so decimated by his earliest experiences. His mother died when he was 7 years old, which he always said was the worst experience in his life. When he was 8, his father disappeared and he was on his own from the age of 8.

My own mother died when I was 10 years old. My folks have told me that what little humor I have comes from her. I can't remember her humor, but I can remember her love and understanding of me. Of course, the mother I know the most about is the mother of our little group. She has been for 22 years trying to raise to maturity four children, three by birth and one by marriage. While she hasn't done a good job, the poor soul has done all that mortal human could do with the material she had to work with.

They're going to have to eat their words. Some of the things I've seen her do on Today when there's breaking news, I thought she's done a fine job. ... Her own journalistic instincts come to the fore.

This is what I know. I look like my father. My father disappeared when he was seventeen years old. Hannah once told me that there is something unnatural about being older than your father ever got to be. When you can say that at the age of seventeen, it's a different kind of devastating.

My father invented a cure for which there was no disease and unfortunately my mother caught it and died of it.