DANO’S STORY One of Us was Going to Die that Evening... ...and it wasn’t Going to be Me! An emptiness and loneliness inside of me I was born in 1959 and raised in small-town USA by Christian parents. My dad was a workaholic, and my mother was in and out of mental institutions. These situations left me to care for my younger brother and sister most of the time. When I was 12, we moved to Binghamton, NY, the 4th most dangerous city in New York State. As a teenager living in a bad part of the city, I started heading in the wrong direction. I moved out from my parent’s apartment when I was 16 to do
my own thing. There was an emptiness and loneliness inside of me that I selfishly tried to fill with sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and alcohol. I was in and out of trouble with the law and lived life on the edge. Deep down inside I knew there was a God, but I was separated from God by my own choice. Shot him in self-defense In my later teens, I noticed that some of my friends and their friends were dying at early ages for various reasons, ranging from suicide, murder, drug overdoses 9
