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.

From my notes:  “In the last three years alone, more than 200 reports about the Las Vegas murder’s activities — particularly large transactions at casinos — have been filed with law enforcement authorities.”

An off-duty nurse from Orange County, California, who only identified herself as Vanessa, ran back amid the danger to help rescue those who had suffered gunshot wounds. She was in Las Vegas to attend the music festival on Sunday night.

“We went back because I’m a nurse and I just felt that I had to. I went to three different scenes. The first one was OK. The second one was worse. And by the time I got to the third one, there was just dead bodies.

There was so many people, just normal citizens, doctors, cops, paramedics, nurses, just off-duty. Everyone was just communicating and working together. It was completely horrible, but it was absolutely amazing to see all of those people come together.”

From my notes:  “When police officers closed in on the gunman at Mandalay Bay, he may have been watching their every move through cameras placed in the hallway.”

University of Nevada, Las Vegas assistant hockey coach Nick Robone was at the Las Vegas concert with his brother, Anthony, a Henderson, Nevada Fire Department paramedic. Initially, the pair thought they heard firecrackers.

“The moment I realized that it was gunshots was when I heard my brother say, ‘I got hit.’ I turned around and I saw him coughing up blood.”

Nick was shot in the chest.

“We just took a little piece of plastic – it appeared to be a sucking chest wound, (so) we put the plastic piece on his chest over the wound” and secured it with three adhesive bandages.”

Nick was put onto an ambulance. Anthony stayed to help, “It was a group effort between everybody, whether they were trained medically or not.”

And about his wounded brother, “I think he’s going to make it out, because he’s tough.”

From my notes:  “Jimmy Kimmel, who grew up in Las Vegas, blames Congress for the Vegas shooting, claiming they’re in the pocket of the NRA.”

Lindsay Padgett and her fiancé Mark Jay were at the Las Vegas music festival Sunday night when the shooting started. After dropping to the ground, they made a break for it, running to an airport hangar for shelter, before making it back to their parked truck.

While driving away a stranger flagged them down, saying he need their vehicle, “We [said], ‘Load them up. Let’s go.’ [We] loaded as many as we could. I just feel like that’s what you do. When people need help, you have to take them to the hospital.”

From my notes: “They shut the lights off on the concert field while first responders were assessing shooting victims, claiming everyone laying the field was deceased even though some were breathing and crying for help.”

Roommates Amy McAslin and Krystal Goddard dived under a table as the gunfire began in Las Vegas on Sunday night. Eventually, McAslin realized she was being shielded by someone who’d just been shot.

“A gentleman – I don’t know his name – he completely covered me. He covered my face. He said, ‘I’ve got you. Just truly incredible, [a] stranger, jumping over me to protect me.”

It’s not clear when the man was wounded. But he said that he had been ‘shot in his rear-end area, and that there was a lot of blood.’ McAslin said the trio held onto one another tightly, chanting: “Everything is going to be okay.”

Once the shooting stopped, the man was helped to a triage area. Goddard and McAslin ran toward an exit, “He’s been in my thoughts all day. He’s a truly amazing person for just trying to protect the whole, under, the whole table area where we were.”