Fatherless Boys - Breaking the Myths

• Alexander Haig, Jr. - Former White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of State, Alexander Haig is said to be associated with the right wing. Yet, people who know him more closely, say that he is quite moderate and down-to-earth. In his book �Caveat�, he mentions that military power and economic strength are important for a country but a peaceful world full of human values, social justice and human genius is the ultimate goal of America.
  Born in the suburbs of Philadelphia on December 2, 1924, Alexander helped his mother to make both ends meet, ever since his father died at the time when he was 10 years old. He started with delivering newspapers, worked for the post office and a refinery and as a store floorwalker. In 1969, he became the Brigadier general and in 1981, he became the 59^th US Secretary of State. Despite all the struggles that he had to go through, Haig insists that his boyhood was quite normal.
• Ed Bradley - CBSTV News Correspondent and co-editor of � 60 Minutes�, Ed Bradley has won an Emmy award. Born on June 22, 1941 in Philadelphia, Bradley's parents separated soon after his birth. His father owned a business in Detroit and his mother worked as a waitress and could only do enough to make ends meet. In his childhood, Ed used to fo to his Dad�s place for summers and for the rest of the year, he used to live with his mother and attended Roman Catholic schools. Bradley had one motto that he firmly believed in - You can be anything you want. In 1959, Bradley befriended George Woods at Cheyney State College, who was a disc jockey for the Philadelphia radio station WDAS FM.
  Known for his impressive interviews, Bradley was give his first chance to announce a minute of news by Woods. He was so nervous that he forgot to vary his pitch and add nuances. Later, Woods announced him to be a �Monotone�. Undaunted by his first attempt, Bradley became hooked on broadcasting and started working as an unpaid disc jockey and news reporter at WDAS. He taught for a while after graduating from college in 1964 but later earned a job at WDAS by covering the Philadelphia race riots for 48 hours. In 1967, he landed a job at CBS radio in New York, became a stringer for CBS's Paris bureau and went to Southeast Asia for 18 months where he was wounded in Cambodia.
• Rickey Henderson - The star baseball player is known for his speed, powerful shots, high average and sharp batting eye. Ricky Henderson is reputed as the �guy who keeps pitchers awake all night�. His childlike personality is as famed as his athletic skills and he simply loves children. He talks with young spectators, before, after or even during games and has handed out broken bats to children as souvenirs. Rickey was born on Christmas Day in 1958 in Chicago, Illinois. His mother Bobbie Henderson was a nurse and his father was a truck driver.
  Just a few months after his birth, his father abandoned the family and his mother moved to her parents in Pine Bluff, Arkansas with her eight children. With the help of the grandparents, his mother worked hard to provide for all of them. They moved to Oakland later. As young as eight years of age, Rickey was already a local phenomenon in baseball. A's star outfielder, Reggie Jackson, was Rickey�s first idol. In 1976, Henderson was selected by the A's. His mother urged him to not to give in to the temptations of numerous football scholarships he was being offered and stick to baseball and got him signed with the Oakland Athletics. In 1984, he joined the New York Yankees for a five-year contract that was reportedly worth $8.6 million.
• Tom Cruise - One of the most famous, successful and highest paid actors of Hollywood, Tom Cruise was born as Thomas Cruise Mapother IV on July 3, 1962. When he was 11, his parents got divorced and his mom took her four children to her hometown, Louisville, KY. There she struggled hard to gain financial stability including selling appliances and hosting electronics conventions. In 1986, they were going through such financial crisis that Mapothers wrote poems and read them to each other as gifts for Christmas because they couldn�t afford anything else.