Father S Day

GOURMET STEAKS, coolers that sing, customized grills and wine tutorials. This year's crop of Father's Day food gifts are off the charts, bringing the dad who loves to cook - and eat - that much closer to food nirvana. Here are our favorite picks that can be ordered now for fast delivery by Sunday, from affordable finds to splurges for the big guy. _ For the cowboy in every dad . . . there's the Beer Holster , a leather 12-ounce bottle or can holder that snaps onto a belt and let's dad grill or walk around the yard without misplacing his beloved brew.

Showers and thunderstorms are in the forecast tonight into Friday night, but Saturday and Sunday - Father's Day - are looking good. After a couple of days in the lows 80's, both weekend days should be sunny or mostly sunny in the mid to upper 80's, according to the National Weather Service. (Ninety-degree heat isn't likely to arise until possibly Wednesday.) The same pattern will be seen at the Shore except that temperatures should be cooler by 5 degrees or so. In the city, scattered showers and thunderstorms could arrive this evening after 8 p.m. But there's a 50-50 chance of no rain at all. Rain's more likely than not Friday, especially in the morning, with up to a half-inch possible during the day. The chances of storminess aren't expected to end until a couple hours after midnight.

NECKTIES. Golf shirts. Nosebleed seats for a Phillies game. What do these items have in common? They're things we guarantee your dad is really sick of getting for Father's Day. This Sunday, get creative. Scrap the cruddy clothes and stale cigars and surprise the big guy with a meal he'll never forget. Spoil dad with a boat ride, a culinary journey to the Middle East, even a beer-lover's walking tour. Read on for these and other ideas. Unless otherwise noted, all events require reservations.

Vincent Thompson is faithful about doing the family laundry every Sunday. But around noon, on the 100th anniversary of Father's Day, he said to his wife, "I'm wondering if I'm doing it today. " "Holy Moly," said his wife of 18 years, Pamela Bridgeforth. "He might actually take the day off. " Thompson, 43, is an organized man. He was laid off from his job as media manager with the Philadelphia School District in January, and he's had more time on his hands than usual. He organized the recent family celebration of a son's high school graduation - but organizing is putting it mildly.

PHIL MARTELLI did not discourage or encourage his two sons about his profession. He just answered questions and let them make the decisions. Phil Martelli Jr. knew very early he wanted to be a basketball coach. It took Jimmy Martelli until after he finished college at Dickinson. Now, they are both in, all the way in. "My son Jimmy wanted no parts of it," the Saint Joseph's head coach said. "When he was a kid, he wanted to be an athletic director. " Jimmy wasn't sure about coaching because he saw how much time and effort his father put into it and the potential downside of that.

JAY WRIGHT has guided the Villanova basketball program to two Final Eights and a Final Four in the last six seasons. "I can't complain," he said. Indeed, his life does not stink. On or off the court. Still, when it comes to highs, nothing really compares to being an assistant coach for one of his three children's teams. Come again? "I love it," he said. "As long as I'm not the person in charge. " Whether that means helping his father coach sons Taylor and Colin to a Little League title 5 years ago, or now getting fields ready for his 11-year-old daughter Reilly's softball games.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice James T. McDermott, 65, was found dead yesterday in his home in Chestnut Hill after failing to appear at a Father's Day gathering. "He was sitting in a chair in his study, looking very much at peace," said his son, James McDermott Jr. McDermott Jr. said that his father, who was just beginning his second 10- year term on the high court, probably died of a heart attack. "The doctor who was here said that's most likely what happened. He said there were no signs of a stroke," said McDermott Jr., who added that his father seemed to be in excellent health and had been out on his bicycle yesterday afternoon.

DEAR ABBY: I cut my father out of my life years ago, after he declared he could not support my decision to adopt three children from a Russian orphanage with my longtime companion. The adoption announcement coincided with my "coming out" to Dad, who is now married to his third wife. This year on Father's Day, I sent him a card and he replied by email that he was glad to hear from me and he hoped for a reconciliation, but was not sure how to go about it. I responded by email that I was cautiously optimistic that we could reignite a respectful relationship.

When Ed Hallinan became a priest, he took a vow of obedience. In the last few weeks, he's come to appreciate "a whole new meaning" to that word. For the last 14 years, Father Ed dedicated himself to the city's poorest and neediest as pastor at St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church at 23d Street and Lehigh Avenue in North Philadelphia. "I was always ecstatic, and I was always thrilled, and sometimes, being ecstatic and being thrilled, I talked to you for 40 minutes," Father Ed said in his final homily, on Father's Day. "The Lord was whispering in my ear, 'Ed, sit down.

By Seymour I. "Spence" Toll After my 48 years of blessed marriage to Jean Barth Toll, pancreatic cancer swept her away in 1999. For all those years, and ever since, I have been a one-woman man. At the core of it was the appeal of her warm, gentle, and unpretentious spirit, with its unfailing kindness, deep friendships, and boundless capacity for our singular love. She had another delightful self. Although she could dress as tastefully as a conservatively clad fashion model, she enjoyed clothing that was not only old but beat up. She often wore a sweater in which her elbows poked out of holes in the sleeves.

WASHINGTON - After weeks of arguing constitutional fine points and citing rival statistics, senators wrangling over gun control saw and heard the anguish of a bereft father. Neil Heslin, whose 6-year-old son, Jesse, was among those cut down at a Connecticut school in December, asked the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to ban assault weapons like the one that killed his child. "I'm not here for the sympathy or the pat on the back," Heslin, a 50-year-old construction worker, told the senators, weeping openly during much of his hushed 11-minute testimony.

By Seymour I. "Spence" Toll After my 48 years of blessed marriage to Jean Barth Toll, pancreatic cancer swept her away in 1999. For all those years, and ever since, I have been a one-woman man. At the core of it was the appeal of her warm, gentle, and unpretentious spirit, with its unfailing kindness, deep friendships, and boundless capacity for our singular love. She had another delightful self. Although she could dress as tastefully as a conservatively clad fashion model, she enjoyed clothing that was not only old but beat up. She often wore a sweater in which her elbows poked out of holes in the sleeves.

DEAR ABBY: I cut my father out of my life years ago, after he declared he could not support my decision to adopt three children from a Russian orphanage with my longtime companion. The adoption announcement coincided with my "coming out" to Dad, who is now married to his third wife. This year on Father's Day, I sent him a card and he replied by email that he was glad to hear from me and he hoped for a reconciliation, but was not sure how to go about it. I responded by email that I was cautiously optimistic that we could reignite a respectful relationship.

Roy Halladay and Mark Buehrle are scheduled to start Wednesday's Phillies-Marlins series finale in Miami, marking the 10th time since 1990 that two authors of a perfect game will oppose one another. Halladay pitched his perfect game in 2010 against the Marlins. Buehrle tossed his while with the Chicago White Sox in 2009. The previous instances, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, are: Dallas Braden-Buehrle in 2011; Randy Johnson-David Wells in 2004, 2005, 2007; Kenny Rogers-Wells in 2000, 2001 (twice)

With a father who is a neonatologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, it isn't difficult to understand why Lauren Fox wants to go into medicine. But her father is also an adventurer who climbed the tallest mountains in Bolivia, first in the Peace Corps in the '60s and then with her two older brothers, so it was inevitable that the 17-year-old would one day follow in his crampon-print footsteps. That day came in June when Lauren Fox, 17, and her brother, James, 29, climbed Huayna Potosi in Bolivia's Cordillera Real, becoming, she believes, the second youngest woman - and youngest non-Bolivian female - to ascend the 20,000-foot peak near La Paz, a city surrounded by mountains.

Eating a Greek brunch, visiting dinosaurs in a museum, going for a run — ways to celebrate Father's Day are as varied as fathers themselves. Despite occasional clouds on Sunday, area families took to parks, museums and restaurants with the fathers in their lives. Here are four families who marked Father's Day in Philadelphia. --- Sunday was no day for participants in the 10th Annual Gary Papa Run to sleep in. Tricia Ushler, 34, of Wilmington and her family began waking up at 5:30 a.m. to prepare for the 5K run/walk named for Papa, the longtime 6ABC Action News sports reporter and anchor who died of prostate cancer in June 2009.

Many a son would give his right arm to have a relationship with his dad like 33-year-old Joe Berardoni Jr. has with his. After his wife died and he was left a single father, the elder Berardoni would skip out of work to catch his son's soccer and basketball games. They forged such a special bond that "young Joe" — who shares a quirky sense of humor with his father, if not his diminutive stature — didn't hesitate when his dad asked him more than a decade ago to work side by side, day after day, at Pun's Toys, his whimsical shop on Lancaster Avenue in Bryn Mawr.

At first glance, Doylestown Township's Central Park looked like an idyllic Norman Rockwell-style rendering of Father's Day afternoon in suburban America. Under a sunny blue sky and cottony clouds, a father with his son in a bike seat passed a mother pushing a stroller, as other families enjoyed the swings or hiked a trail across a stretch of meticulously maintained lawn. But Sunday's park crowd was swelled by evacuees from a nearby upscale neighborhood whose Father's Day had been jarred by frightening sights and sounds on Bittersweet Drive and surrounding streets.

As my stepfather neared the end of his long battle with pancreatic cancer, his 10 children flocked to his side. As people expressed sympathy about our dying father, I always felt compelled to correct them: stepfather. The biologically correct term didn't matter in the end. He was the glue that held fast the fabric of our blended family. I remind myself as Father's Day nears that when my stepfather died — my father died. I'm in a group of the 1 in 3 Americans who are part of a stepfamily.

Pavel Khodorkovsky is the son of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former Yukos chief and an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, and is also president of the Institute of Modern Russia Scanning the Father's Day aisle at the local card store, I see quickly how hard it will be to pick out something fitting. My father isn't a golfer, and he isn't known for his prowess on the football field or interest in home-improvement projects. There is no card that says "Happy Father's Day … from the Outside.