Dana White, King of MMA

loved hanging with these guys. A number of Southie boys would be in Dana’s wedding,
and John Barry, (Baso) would be his best man.
There was a story one of them told me about someone owing his friend money,
and the person who owed the money had decided he was not going to pay the money
back. One night, they paid a visit to the person who owed the money. They kicked
open his door and stuck a gun in the man’s mouth and told him that he either paid
back the money in a week or else. It was a simple enough story, but before all of this
happened a friend had told me, they thought the person with the gun looked like
Howdy Doodie. When I heard the story, I dubbed him the Howdy Doodie killer, though
I did not tell him that. Never judge a book by its cover.
For a brief period, I had a business in the Financial District in downtown Boston, a
concierge service serving some of the high-rise office buildings. Dana came to me at
work one day and said, “Mom, I need six hundred dollars, and I need it today.” He had
no job at the time, and I assumed the money was probably for his rent, but I asked
him why he needed this money so urgently. He informed me he owed a bookie who
had given him to the end of the day to pay up. Dana apparently had put a bet on a
game and lost.
I asked him, “How could you bet six hundred dollars you don’t have and that you
know you’re not going to have because you have no job.”
He told me it was a sure thing! Obviously not. I gave him the money because I
didn’t want to see him in the hospital for the next month, but he had to work it off. I
was not just going to let him pay me back when he got a job. Dana worked for me for
two weeks as a bike courier in downtown Boston in the middle of winter to pay off the
money I gave him.
Although Boston is a big city, it still has the feeling of a small town. At one time,
both my kids were living in Boston, and Boston holds lots of good memories of good
times and good friends for all of us. Dana’s sister was going to college there and lived
in the dorm, and she would move back in with me during summer breaks. By then I
had a much larger two-bedroom apartment. She worked while going to college, as a
waitress for a while and then was hired to work in the emergency room at Brigham