Bob Arum sits alone. He’s gregarious by nature, a man who truly loves his work as boxing promoter, but right now no one knows what to say. He’s left to his own thoughts.
Across the hall in a Beverly Hills hotel two months ago, the noise speaks of anticipation. In a few minutes the boxers and their entourages are going to arrive and Arum will orchestrate the circus, his specialty.
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Lee Samuels knows someone has to say something to Arum. He’s worked for Arum for decades, been witness to all the staged hype and hoopla that keeps Arum going at age 78.
But he has to ask. “Bob, are you sure you can do this?”
It has been less than an hour since the telephone call that he had not been expecting. But he knows right away when he’s told his 49-year-old, mountain-climbing son, John, is missing, “he’s dead.”
In retrospect, he says while raising a fist in front of his face, the blood drained from his fingers as if he’s tightly clutching something, “I wanted to hold on to hope.
“I was just sitting there in that room praying I was wrong. Maybe it’s just a broken leg, I told myself, or something like that and we’ll all laugh about it later.”
His gut tells him differently, but he’s open to anything as a search for his son continues in Washington. Someone suggests he talk to a spiritualist, so he does.
The spiritualist tells him John is alive, but stuck in a crevice. “You feel stupid,” Arum says. “But it does raise your hopes.”
There are clues, but no answers for four days. The family gathers nearby the mountain in a house. It’s a place where no parent ever wants to reside.
Arum waits with his wife; his ex-wife who is John’s mother; his son Richard; and his daughter Elizabeth. They try to find something to talk about, but it always comes back to John.
“Sometimes there are moments of elation,” says Arum, his family hanging on every word from park rangers. “But when they spot his fanny pack from a helicopter, some of the rangers think maybe he fell, and it came off.
“The head ranger won’t give up,” Arum says. “She brings in dogs. S
