It’s a rare thing that I’ll do a spotlight on an ancestor that I’ve actually met. Today is one of those days. I was 10 years old when my great grandfather passed and I remember meeting him several times. It was always a treat when he and my great grandmother would come to Tennessee to visit. We all enjoyed them so much. I remember them both being so good at telling stories - and I know grandpa in particular was known for spinning his yarns and was intelligent and well-spoken.
Larimore Karns Montgomery, or Grandpa Montgomery, as we called him, was born in 1903 to JB and Alice Montgomery, who had just married the previous year. As a young child he suffered many illnesses which stunted his growth and deeply impacted his home life. His baby brother died when Larry was 14, and his parents divorced soon after. His mother spiraled into depression and they were soon living with his grandparents on their farm close by. At 26, in 1930, he was living on his own working as an insurance salesman, and his mother lived with him. By 1935 he was married and my Gramma Jean was born when her mother was 21. Both he and Grandma were known to be thrifty, being raised in the Great Depression. By 1950 he was a tank room foreman at Welch’s, working 65 hours a week, and Grandma was a laborer there. He spent most of his working life at Welch’s, and even owned stock in that company.
Grandpa was an avid outdoorsmen and had many hunting stories he loved to tell. He would get so involved in his own stories that his trigger finger would start twitching. My dad, at the time, being the redneck he is, loved to hear about all his hunting adventures. I wish I knew all the details, but there is a story he used to tell about going out hunting, during The Depression, and him bringing home an albino deer he’d killed to feed the family. When he passed and all of his possessions were dolled out to all the different relatives, my family was remembered in some very sweet ways. Since my Dad is one of the more outdoorsman-types in the family he inherited one of grandpa’s rifles. Dad has only killed a few deer in his time hunting, and both the ones we have mounted were taken with grandpa’s rifle. It was so exciting when he brought them home, and then had his first deer ever mounted. We promptly decided we would name him Fred, Fred the Dead Dinner ™. Fred still hangs out on the wall in my parents’ basement, watching all of us grow up and older like the creepy Dead Fred he is.
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| "Concert on the River" and "Darkness" (1923) |
My brother, I think, has a special connection to grandpa. My brother, for most of his life, struggled with a birth defect called Hirschsprung's Disease, which affects the cells of the large intestine. He was in and out of the hospital our entire childhood, and we nearly lost him a number of times. It’s a defect he inherited from Grampa, along with his love for bowties and love of words. My brother is easily one of the smartest people I know, a trait he also inherited from Grampa. At Grampa’s funeral in 1995 the family had some poetry that he’d written assembled into books and handed them out for everyone to keep in memory of him. I asked my brother if he had a copy of them - to which he responded “I have the originals”. (Imagine my excitement!) I asked him to pick out his favorites and send them to me, and he sent me, like, 5. It's beautiful to see his words, his handwriting, and the background info he gives on each.
We all miss Grampa, and the effects of his life are still felt just as strongly as they were when I was a kid.
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