Somedays I don’t think this old heart can take anymore pain and crying really screws with a guy’s masculinity. I say this after learning that yet another friend of mine has passed away.

John Wayne Atyeo and I met while he was still operating the recycled waste route in our neighborhood.  After ‘single-stream’ recycling began in the Eagle Canyon area, Waste Management transferred him elsewhere.

Off and on, depending how busy he was that Thursday (our recycle day) we’d stop and visit for a few minutes, exchanging stories and laughter. From those relatively short chats, I learned that he had wrestled for and graduated in 1979 from Hug High, in Reno, Nevada; joined the U.S.  Marine Corps shortly after high school; and named after his father’s favorite actor, ‘John Wayne,’ “while being conceived in Hawai’i while my dad was on leave from ‘Nam and mom was there visiting him.”

An avid bodybuilder, ‘The Duke’ could hardly contain himself as he told me about how he’d place second in the ‘Master Men 50,’ and sixth in the ‘Men’s Middleweight’ classes of the Nevada State Bodybuilding, Figure & Bikini Championships in 2012, while three-years later he placed 11th in the ‘Men’s Middleweight’ and seventh in the ‘Masters over 50’ catagories. The last time I talked to him was in early November 2016, shortly after he took down an alleged gunman at a Trump rally being held at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center.

I remember how excited he was – and John was not the excitable-type – as he told me, “Someone yelled ‘He has a gun!’ I looked behind me and I saw this guy running through the crowd, so I tackled the guy to the ground.”

“I mean it was instinct or training, I don’t know, but I do know I couldn’t wait for him to take a shot at Trump,” he added.

“I tackled him from behind,” John explained . “He didn’t know I was coming, and I tackled him  hard and I threw him on the ground. I restrained his legs so he couldn’t move them. I also had his left arm, and at the same time I was trying to search him and get a hold of the gun. As I was doing this, he kept trying to get his arms free from my grip which made me think he really did have a weapon.”

John was pretty happy with himself and as we talked I looked the story up on the Internet, telling him he’d made the New York Times. “I hate that rag – but now I have to go find where I can get one,” he laughed.

“Yeah, Anita (his wife) is kind of miffed at me,” he chuckled, “But I also think she’s secretly proud of me, too.”

John passed away from a massive heart attack while working on October 29, 2018 in Reno, Nevada. He was born in Memphis, Tennessee on February 8, 1961. He was only 57-years-old.

But tonight, I’m hoisting a double whiskey, high in John’s honor, while shedding tears for everyone’s loss.

From my notes:  “Several witnesses, survivors, bystanders and law enforcement officers are still saying there were multiple shooters at the Las Vegas concert.”

As bullets ripped into country music fans, over 300 people ran a mile to the Las Vegas airport. In doing so they kicked down chain-link fences, climbed through razor wire and were briefly mistaken for attackers.

“I’m thinking to myself, I don’t know if the airport police know what’s going on yet,” says Mark Gay of Anahiem, California, “We were running, running out of the dark. If the cops were on that side, they don’t know who we are. So it was: ‘Put your arms out when you’re coming in.’”

“We were making the decision — we’re headed to the airport. The airport seems like the most secure, safe place,” says Fred Rowbotham, an off-duty police officer from the San Diego area.

As for Gay, “We’re still trying to remember how many fences we actually knocked down.”

There is nothing like the loss of a parent to leave a child overwhelmed with all the responsibilities and duties of taking care of that parent’s final arrangements. That’s what is happening to three women I’ve known since they were preschoolers.

Elyse, Lauren and Renee are the daughters of my son’s God-father, Gene, who passed away in 2016. Well, his ex-wife, Vicki died earlier this month and to help draw some of the strain off ‘the girls,’ I offered to do the only thing I’m fairly decent at.

Vicki Louise Hall Clauson, 63, passed away from a pulmonary embolism brought on by end-stage kidney failure, following a lengthy battle with diabetes on October 18, 2018 at Providence Medical Center, in Medford, Oregon. She was born in Portland, Oregon, on April 6, 1955 and raised in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey.

Prior to moving to Oregon to be near her daughters, Vicki worked at John Ascuaga’s Nugget in Sparks, Nevada, for 13 years. She was a member of the Red Hats Society and volunteered at the Central Point Senior Center.

Vicki is preceded in death by her parents, Richard and Vesta Hall and her former husband Gene Clauson. She is survived by her brother Gary Hall of Prescott, Arizona and her three daughters, Elyse Fryling, her husband, Dustin and their two daughters, Alyssa and Rylee of Medford, Oregon; Renee Clauson of Central Point, Oregon; and Lauren Clauson and her three daughters, Sierra Ingram, Madison Turner and Natalie Turner of Denver, Colorado.

The family asks that in lieu of flowers, a donation be made in Vicki’s name to the American Diabetes Association. Funerary arrangements are being handled by Perl Funeral Home.

In a nutshell — death sucks!

From my notes:  “Yes, I’ve ‘scoped’ down profiles on survivors and those who helped save others. We need to know, that amid the darkness, a brighter light shined the night of the Vegas shooting.”

As the shooting began in Las Vegas, Mike Cronk stood his ground. He tried to help his friend who had taken three bullets to the chest.

“Most people started scattering and they climbed the fence, but I had to stay with my buddies. We got him over the fence once the firing stopped and slid him under a stage so we were safe.

My first thoughts were for my buddy. I wanted to make sure he was taken care of. But, you know, we were pretty much yelling at everybody to stay down. That was what we needed to do.”

My son, Kyle, lost his last grandparent on October 6, 2018 in Sedalia, Missouri. Dorothy Lane was born August 10, 1934 in Kansas City, Missouri, to Floyd and Grace Whittle.

She was raised in Kansas City and later lived in Nevada and California, where she worked as a manager for several doctors’ offices. It was while she was living in Reno, that I came to know her because of Kyle, through my son’s mother, Charissa Robbins.

As Kyle wrote on his Facebook timeline: “I will always love you and I will miss you until I see you again. Heaven gained an angel tonight.”

From my notes:  “Wynn Las Vegas and Encore have begun checking bags with handheld metals detectors.”

In the middle of the Las Vegas shooting, Addison Short tried to make a run for it. But her knee gave way: “I just got shot, I can’t run. You kept hearing gunshots. They just weren’t stopping.”

Then a man used his belt to wrap her leg in a tourniquet and rush her to safety, “He just picked me up and threw me over his shoulder.”

The man carried her to a taxi that took her to the hospital, “It was just the scariest experience of my life.”

Dreams can be so real and yet so odd. Real because of how you feel and think after waking up, odd because of the subject of the dream and (at least for me) the ‘composite people’ that make up the dreamscape.

A group of us were at dinner, when I was called away from the table to the telephone. Elizabeth, a friend of mine wanted to know if I were available for drinks.

Having jus’ finished eating I told her that I was and that I’d soon be over to her place to pick her up. I then returned to the table to excuse myself.

As I was saying my good-byes and heading for the exit, I was stopped – I had another telephone call. Again it was Elizabeth, who was now begging off our getting together because she was reminded that being seen with me was a bad move for her radio career.

Hurt, I told her that I understood, hung up the phone and proceeded to leave the restaurant. As I entered the foyer and walk by the front desk, another friend named Debbie, stopped me and asked if everything were okay.

As briefly as possible I explained what happened. Feeling bad for me, she hugged me tight and told me, “If I weren’t at work right now, I’d take you home and we’d have more than a night-cap.”

“Thank you,” I responded as my bedside alarm clock began to sound off.

From my notes:  “Marilou Danley came to the U.S. as Marilou Natividad, married Geary Danley in 1990 and took his surname. Danley lives in Arkansas, but he has declined to answer questions. In 1996, Marilou wed Jose Bustos, and became Marilou Bustos. But she did not dissolve her marriage to Danley until 2015, divorce records show.”

The Beatons traveled from Bakersfield to the Las Vegas music festival to celebrate their 23rd wedding anniversary. That Sunday evening, Jack would die a hero shielding his wife, Laurie.

“He told me, ‘Get down, get down, get down!’”

He put his body on top of hers for protection. Laurie knew her husband was dead when she told him she loved him and he didn’t respond.

“He told me, ‘I love you, Laurie,’ and his arms were around me and his body just went heavy on me. I screamed his name and he wasn’t answering me. There was a lot of blood.”

Someone yelled run, “So we ran. I knew every day that he would protect me and take care of me and love me unconditionally, and what he did is no surprise to me. He is my hero.”

It was a very enjoyable day on October 26th, for everyone involved, I do believe. The day I’m speaking of is the wedding of my very good friend, Chuck Whitten and his best friend, Maria Jesus Molina Contreras.

They asked me to be their photographer for not only the nuptials, but also for the small party after, which was held on the deck of a local restaurant. It was a glorious day, all the way around.

Somehow, Chuck managed to get a photograph of me when I wasn’t looking. That’s what I get for putting the camera down – and how one breaks their camera in the end.

As a funny aside, I posted on Facebook, a couple of other photographs sent to me the following day, by the newly weds, including a close-up of Maria and me. The next thing I know, I have some of my friends and a number of her friends congratulating ‘us’ on ‘getting married.’ There was so much confusion about whom-married-whom, that I eventually  removed the pictures from my timeline.

Whoa!

Anyway, thank you Maria and Chuck for letting me be small a part of your special day. May you have a long and happy life together!

From my notes:  “The murderer in the Las Vegas shooting legally purchased firearms from Nevada, Utah, California, and Texas.”

They were on leave in Las Vegas during the mass shooting. The ‘they’ are six soldiers from the UK’s Queen’s Dragoon Guards. The half-dozen men had been taking part in a training exercise in the Nevada desert and were enjoying their time-off and a drink in a nearby casino at the time.

Ross Woodward explains that the six of them used their training to try and save as many people as they could, using pillows, tea towels, belts and their shirts as makeshift tourniquets to stop the injured bleeding out as dead bodies lay around them.