A Hermon High School graduate and Levant property owner sat among the billionaires and former presidents at the second inauguration of Donald Trump last month.
Ultimate Fight Championship President and CEO Dana White, who graduated from Hermon in 1987, was seated directly behind former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and former First Ladies Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton, as Trump was sworn into his second term as president.
His appearance on stage wasn’t surprising to anyone who has paid attention. Months earlier, he joined Trump on stage for his victory speech on Election Day, and he spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.
And last month, White was named to the board of directors for Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram and is one of the most powerful social media companies in the world.
White has held fame and influence in the professional sports world and known Trump for years, but the UFC giant who grew up visiting Maine each summer now rubs elbows with some of the world’s most powerful political and tech figures. It’s an unprecedented level of influence for a Hermon grad, especially as White continues to maintain a strong connection to the state.
White said that his love of Maine stems from his time visiting his grandparents and cousins in Levant every summer as a child. The support from those family members, he said, “helped shape me into the person I am today.”
“My time up there meant so much to me and I loved the place so much that I bought the whole street that my grandmother and grandfather lived on,” White told the Bangor Daily News. “I went house to house, knocked on everyone’s door and asked if they would sell me their house.”
White then donated the homes to the local fire department to burn down for training, he said.
Wyatt Morrison, a lieutenant at the Levant Fire Department, confirmed the department burned down one of White’s homes roughly five years ago. The department also burned down another of White’s houses some 10 to 15 years ago, but that was before Morrison joined the department in 2018.
Today, White said he owns nine homes on Phillips Road in Levant, totalling 60 acres, which he combined into one property, in addition to 30 acres on Kenduskeag Road and 3 acres on Black Stream Drive in Levant. One of the Levant properties suffered an attempted break-in in 2023.
White also owns 1 Main St. in Bangor, which houses Umami Noodle Bar.
“I wanted my kids to experience the place and the people, and that’s why I invested so much in Maine,” White said. “I continue to buy more and more property up there, and I will until the day I die.”
Now, White said he spends every Fourth of July in Levant with his family and often brings friends to the area in the summer for vacation. Maine, he said, remains his friends’ favorite vacation destination in the summer.
“I will go there every summer until I physically can’t go there anymore,” White said. “When I want to get away from everything, I go to Maine. Everything I love is in Maine.”
People tend to notice when White returns to the state. In July 2022, White stopped at the Irish Setter Pub in Presque Isle while traveling with a group of friends, one of whom was borrowing White’s red Ferrari for the trip while White drove his motorcycle. The celebrity and his sports car caught people’s attention and a crowd quickly gathered at the restaurant.
“Everybody started calling everybody and within 15 minutes, there were 100 people out front,” White said.
But his connection to Maine goes beyond owning properties and vacationing.
In 2011, White donated $100,000 to Hermon High School to upgrade its athletic complex. The school used the funds to install a combination multisport scoreboard-LCD message center and purchase additional seating for Pottle Field.
White brought a UFC Fight Night event to the Cross Insurance Center in 2014 despite it not being financially beneficial for his company, he said. The event did, however, draw a crowd of more than 5,000 and was televised on Fox Sports 1 to fans in 170 countries.
In 2016, White filmed an episode of his internet reality show “Dana White: Lookin’ for a Fight” in Bangor, and five local fighters performed.
Alex Gray, president of Waterfront Concerts in Bangor, said White has come to the Maine Savings Amphitheater a few times in recent years and the two of them have “exchanged pleasantries about two Maine guys trying to make it in entertainment.”
“He’s always been super complimentary to our efforts and for that I’m grateful,” Gray said.
White has become one of the most prominent figures in Trump’s orbit in recent years. The pair’s connection dates back to 2001 when White held a UFC battle at the former Trump Taj Mahal, a casino-hotel in New Jersey.
Since then, Trump has been spotted at UFC matches and White, in turn, made appearances at Republican conventions in 2016, 2020 and 2024, the Associated Press reported. White even spoke briefly at Trump’s election victory party last November and attended a rally for Trump on the night before his second inauguration.
Bernard Kubetz, a Bangor-based lawyer who represented White some 15 to 20 years ago, remembers him as “very direct, principled, tenacious, focused, blunt and result-oriented.” Those qualities, Kubetz said, led him to be successful in both his litigation and in his UFC career.
In the years after representing him, Kubetz said he has watched White become very successful and connected in his UFC career.
“Part of me was surprised to see his stature and proposed position within the Trump administration,” Kubetz said. “But, part of me wasn’t because it’s consistent with his meteoric rise in his profession and the business world.”
White said his ties to Trump and other prominent figures stem from the global appeal of professional combat sports.
“I always believed that UFC was going to be huge, but I never saw any of this other stuff coming,” White said. “Fighting touches everybody.”
Despite his involvement with Trump, White said he has “zero interest” in politics or taking on a political role. As for his new position at Meta, said he accepted it due to his passion for social media and artificial intelligence and his belief that “it’s the future.”
“I’ve used those tools to help build my businesses,” he said. “Now, not only do I get to learn more from the inside, I actually have a hand in the future of it.”