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Open Letter to the Tahoe City Community

Randy Davis performs a "bareback" flip at Squaw Valley USA.
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My son was very special (as every son is to his mother) ” there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for him and, the most wonderful thing about this 21-year-old boy, there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for me; his mom, for his sister, for a friend. This caring, giving community feels the loss with me, and has overwhelmed me (and his sister, Jessica) with generosity of prayer and support ” people who I know intimately, friendly, platonically, casually, in passing ” the giving, the generosity of this community is overwhelming ” and our gratitude is difficult to express in a time of such profound loss.

“It is a wealthy person, indeed, who calculates riches not in gold but in friends.” I know I am a wealthy person and I count that among my blessings. I still miss my son in every moment of every day. There is no way to measure the pride I have in the son I raised ” not for his accomplishments, but for the man he already was, at such a young age.

I cry every day for my son ” but I don’t cry all day. I derive comfort from the outpouring of support from this nurturing community. I derive pleasure from the knowing that Randy had that love and support not just from his family, but from all of you, to enrich and fulfill his too-short life.



I don’t know how to convey to you, this palpable thing that is community, the value of this thing that is not one person but every ONE person together. It does not ease the pain ” but it does provide comfort with the pain, reassurance of the sanctity that is the condition of humanity that is community.

I had two kids and my world revolves around them. They are my pride, my joy, my pain, my heart, my life. I revel in my daughter’s natural talent, brilliance, drive and moral certainty. I admire Randall’s indomitable spirit, sweetness, his ability to transcend, his silliness, his maturity in interpersonal relationships beyond his years, his selflessness. What a sense of humor, and how he would laugh ” full-bodied, genuine and out of control. He embodies the self-confident dreamer ” slow to anger, quick to laugh, a genuine listener and an independent spirit, unaffected by peer influence.



There are so many individuals whose compassion and caring carried me through the early days of this new enterprise I enter called “life.” A few names ” of course Jessica and Brian ” Brian the saint who rose to the difficult occasion, Sandy, Tom and Patti, Dave and Jennifer, Chris and Lou, Wally and Cindy, Jim and Susan, Ann and George, Sue and Tom, Lisa and The Store, Ed and Lolly, Sawtooth Ridge Staff: Christine, Erika, Catalina, Armando, Ivan, Genaro, Israel, Chris, Nat and Squaw Valley Freestyle, North Tahoe High School and TTUSD, Wes and Squaw Valley Ski Patrol, Robyn, Marilyn, Karen and Squaw Valley Squaw Kids and profound thanks to Terry and Paul Dyer – whose unconditional support has been above and beyond any business relationship, and so, so many others ” from here, from San Francisco, from Catalina, from Iowa, from Oak Ridge, Tennessee ” thank you for being there for us.

” Nanci Davis, Tahoe City

It was not supposed to happen this way,

I, 64 years your senior, was supposed to go first.

Our mind’s eye can see you, that late December 08

Eager to be out there, up there,

Putting first tracks in the new snow.

Exhilarated, elated, exalted, as you sliced through the morning air,

Whirling, weaving, arcing from side to side,

The body and ski bent at the critical angle

To foil gravity’s headlong rush and centrifugal’s outward thrust.

It’s all physics, isn’t it? Newton knew.

There’s a reason his insights are called Laws.

Icarus was an aerialist too.

I told you about the tides of the moon and the sun.

Why didn’t I tell you about Icarus

And flying too close to the sun?

I know, I know: you loved to fly high,

Feeling free in your backflips and multiple spins,

Delight in the adrenaline rush.

My words of caution, like those of Daedalus,

Would have fallen on deaf ears.

Now we have lost you.

But not really, dear child of my child.

For your grandmother and me,

For your darling mother and sister,

For your half-sister and -brother and other relatives,

For your many, many, friends and acquaintances,

You will always be in our hearts.

Yes, it was not supposed to happen this way.

” Monroe Wechsler


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