Dana White, King of MMA

Frances, showed up on my doorstep one night after we had been living in Vegas for a
couple years, pregnant and with her boyfriend. No phone call, no notice just rang my
doorbell one night and said hi, I’m moving out here. They moved in with us until her
boyfriend found a job and they were able to get their own place. At least by the time
my sister joined us I had bought a five-bedroom house. With all the company and
family staying with us, we needed the five bedrooms. Living in Las Vegas people were
always coming out to visit for a week or two, not that I minded. It was always nice to
have a house full of people.
In the summer when school let out, Dana and Kelly would go back East. That way I
didn’t have to worry about them being home with babysitters or, when they got
older, alone while I was at work, which was all the time. Kelly would spend the
majority of her summer with her grandmother in Wales, Massachusetts, and Dana the
majority of his summer in Levant, Maine with his other grandmother. They both had
many friends and relatives back east, so they looked forward to seeing everyone and
escaping the brutal, Las Vegas summers.
One evening while I was at work, my brothers, George and Michael decided they
were going to take a ride out to a place on the Colorado River known as the hot
springs. They took Dana with them without calling me. Dana was probably twelve
years old at the time. It is part of our family mythology that anyone who goes
anywhere with my brother George always has a story to tell for life, and that was the
case for Dana on this occasion. Around nine-thirty that night, I receive a call at work
from my brother Michael. He asks if I have heard from Dana or George. I had no idea
why he was asking because I assumed Dana and George were at home. Michael
explained that the three of them went to the hot springs for the afternoon. It’s not
the easiest place to get to, to reach the hot springs you have to hike down cliffs.
Michael says to me that, on the way back up to the car, he ran ahead of George and
Dana. After he climbed up the rope that hangs down over a small cliff area, he pulled
the rope up so they couldn’t get to the car. He apparently thought this would be
funny.
Michael said he waited for George and Dana to reach the cliff where the rope had
been hanging, but they never showed. When it started getting dark, he walked back