Father

ROCKVILLE -- Last spring's triple slaying in Silver Spring shocked investigators and neighbors, who wondered who could kill 8-year-old Trevor Horn by disconnecting the quadriplegic life-support system, and shoot the boy's mother and nurse in the head.Yesterday, police offered an even more shocking tale, charging the boy's father with contracting out the grisly murders to a storefront minister from Detroit.The motive, police said: Trevor's estate, worth at least $1 million -- money he received as part of a medical malpractice suit.

A 39-year-old Carroll County man received probation before judgment yesterday when he agreed to the state's version of the facts in a child abuse case involving his son.Carroll Circuit Judge Luke K. Burns Jr. gave the defendant five years of probation, with one year supervised, on a charge of battery.The defendant, whose name is being withheld to protect the privacy of the victim, pleaded guilty to that charge but will have a clean criminal record because of the judge's probation-before-judgment ruling.

I AM the gay son of state Sen. William "Pete" Knight, a California Republican. Although I'm not politically active, I feel that my story offers insights on the "definition of marriage" initiative written by my father, which is slated for California's March 2000 ballot.My father has written and pushed a number of anti-gay bills in the California legislature. According to the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Center, it is a political and legislative campaign unparalleled in California history.

ATLANTA -- Georgetown, its coach, John Thompson III, told reporters yesterday, is "the son-of team." He quickly added, "And look, Florida might be the son-of team also." Ohio State might also fit that description, except only one of its players is a "son of." Poor UCLA, then. The Bruins are the only participants in the Final Four without a player whose father's name is instantly recognizable - as an athlete, and most likely as a basketball player. How'd they crash the family picnic? The better question is: How did the other three teams manage this, to get so much from the sons of highly accomplished fathers?

MYRON TURNER'S profile might not fit that of the usual Father's Day poster dad. But in the past year he has come much further toward that ideal than many of the other men who are being honored today for the positive roles they play.At 20, Myron Turner is the father of five daughters, ranging in age from 4 months to 5 years old. Despite his love of lacrosse, football and other sports, he dropped out of Walbrook High School in favor of spending more time as a gang leader in the lucrative drug trade on West Baltimore's mean streets.

Invoking the slaying last week of her father, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ruthann Aron called for tougher sentences for criminals and took shots at one of her chief rivals for the nomination during a televised forum last night.The one-hour session aired live on WBFF-TV (Channel 45) was the first head-to-head meeting of the leading four contenders for the job now held by three-term Democratic Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes, who faces token opposition in the Sept. 13 primary.The participants included the political target of Ms. Aron's jabs, former Tennessee Sen. Bill Brock, as well as first-term state Del. C. Ronald Franks and perennial candidate Ross Z. Pierpont.

Occasionally, when I'm walking down the street, I'll spot a man and think: He looks like my father.I'm never quite sure what it is in these men that reminds me of my father. A tilt of the head, perhaps. Or a slightly amused expression around the eyes. Someone, perhaps, who telegraphs sense of pleasure about the state of being alive.One reason for my uncertainty about identifying the similarities between such men and my father is that I don't have a clear memory of what my father looked like.

An article in Monday's editions of The Sun erroneously referred to the marital status of Phillip Weaver Jr., the father of a 3 1/2 -year-old White Marsh girl who wounded herself while playing with his handgun. Weaver is not married.The Sun regrets the error.A 3 1/2 -year-old White Marsh girl was seriously wounded last night while playing with her father's handgun, a Baltimore County police spokesman said.William Toohey, the spokesman, said Asia Antoinette Weaver of the 9200 block of Oswald Way at Canterbury Apartments was in her father's bedroom about 6: 45 p.m. when she took his .45-caliber handgun from under his bed and shot herself in the midsection while playing with the weapon.

I know everyone has a story about the first person they loved. My story is different. My first love was my father -- boxer Rudolph Valentino Watkins Sr. My father is the first man who instilled in me what a man or what a gentleman is all about. My dad would always have these different sayings, such as, "A man has nothing but his word. If a man does not keep his word then he is not a true man." I did not understand what he meant as a child, but as I matured I grew to know what he meant.

"The Shadow Man," by Mary Gordon. Random House. 272 pages. $24.How odd to think that memoirs, especially memoirs of the father, were once the province of old duffers, faded ladies and of the mildewed great. Diligently written in leisure, indefatigably distributed, those were prosy, costive volumes of righteous adulation, peevishness and rheumy maunderings.The memoir of today is a different, stronger cup of tea: poured out hot with passion and laced with salt tears, vitriol and gall.These are the works of writers in the first flush of their powers or, as in the case of Mary Gordon, in their prime.