Samuel Proctor Oral History Program College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Program Director: Dr. Paul Ortiz Office Manager: Tamarra Jenkins 241 Pugh Hall Digital Humanities Coordinator: Deborah Hendrix PO Box 115215 Gainesville, FL 32611 352-392-7168 352-846-1983 Fax
The Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP) was founded by Dr. Samuel Proctor at the University of Florida in 1967. Its original projects were collections centered around Florida history with the purpose of preserving eyewitness accounts of economic, social, political, religious and intellectual life in Florida and the South. In the 45 years since its inception, SPOHP has collected over 5,000 interviews in its archives.
Transcribed interviews are available through SPOHP for use by research scholars, students, journalists, and other interested groups. Material is frequently used for theses, dissertations, articles, books, documentaries, museum displays, and a variety of other public uses. As standard oral history practice dictates, SPOHP recommends that researchers refer to both the transcript and audio of an interview when conducting their work. A selection of interviews are available online here through the UF Digital Collections and the UF Smathers Library system. Suggested corrections to transcripts will be reviewed and processed on a case- by-case basis.
Oral history interview transcripts available on the UF Digital Collections may be in draft or final format. SPOHP transcribers create interview transcripts by listening to the original oral history interview recording and typing a verbatim document of it. The transcript is written with careful attention to reflect original grammar and word choice of each interviewee; subjective or editorial changes are not made to their speech. The draft transcript can also later undergo a final edit to ensure accuracy in spelling and format. Interviewees can also provide their own spelling corrections. SPOHP transcribers refer to the Merriam- Webster’s dictionary, Chicago Manual of Style, and program-specific transcribing style guide, accessible at SPOHP’s website.
For more information about SPOHP, visit http://oral.history.ufl.edu or call the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program office at 352-392-7168.
-May 2015
The Foundation for The Gator Nation An Equal Opportunity Institution TMP-051 Interviewee: Robert Montague Interviewer: Mariah Justice and Austyn Szempruch Date: October 23, 2014
J: I’m Mariah Justice. I’m here with Austyn Szempruch interviewing—
M: Robert Montague.
J: At Christ Church. It’s October 23, 2014 and if you could just state your name and
when you were born?
M: I’m Robert L. Montague III. I was born in Washington D.C. on September 18,
1935.
J: Could you spell your last name for me, please?
M: M-o-n-t-a-g-u-e.
J: Okay, thank you. Is there anything you remember particular about your
childhood, maybe when you moved to this area? Or how was growing up in
D.C.?
M: Well, my grandparents bought the home I live in in Urbanna the year before I was
born, and I’ve been coming to Urbanna as a result of that fact ever since. But I’ve
only lived there fulltime one year of my life, and that was in the seventh grade
when I attended Christ Church School. But I’ve owned the home that I live in in
Urbanna since 1978. And I have another home in Alexandria, so that’s why I
don’t live here all the time.
J: Okay. Can you tell me a little bit about your parents, maybe? What did they do?
M: Yeah, certainly. My father, who I was named for, Robert Latney Montague, was
born in 1897 and was the son of Andrew Jackson Montague and Elizabeth TMP-051; Montague; Page 2
Hoskins Montague. And he grew up during the time of the First World War,
enlisted in Marine Corps during that war as a private, and was fighting in France
in the Meuse-Argonne region and in the Battle of Landerville, a very small village
in eastern France, where he won the Navy Cross and a battlefield commission
for knocking out a German machine gun nest. And after the war was over, he
returned to Virginia and finished his degree at the University of Virginia. And
then, was offered a regular commission and decided to go back into the Marine
Corps for a career and served through World War II, and rose to the rank of
brigadier general, and was retired after the war because he was deafened in the
Okinawa Campaign during the Pacific part of World War II. And he,
subsequently, had two jobs. One, he went into business with his brother-in-law in
Texarkana, Texas for two years, after the year I was here in the seventh grade.
And then, he got an opportunity to become the first Resident Director of Gunston
Hall, George Mason’s home, in Fairfax County. And we lived there for five years
from [19]49 to [19]54 before he finally retired to Urbanna for good, and lived there
for eighteen years, until he died in 1972. And my mother stayed on there until
1978.
J: Did your mother ever have a job, or was she a homemaker?
M: She was primarily a homemaker. She raised me and my younger brother, and
she was a Gray Lady in the Red Cross. And she actually taught French for one
year here at Christ Church School. But she did not work outside the home,
except doing volunteer work of various kinds. TMP-051; Montague; Page 3
J: Awesome. You mentioned you had a brother. Are there any more siblings that
you have?
M: There were just me and my brother, and we’re thirteen years different in age. He
was born in 1948.
J: And what’s his name?
M: Francis Breckenridge Montague.
J: Awesome. How about your schooling as a kid, or growing up?
M: Well, I grew up the son of a Marine officer. And so, first, we’re stationed at
Quantico when I was born. Then we moved to Pensacola, Florida, where my
father commanded the Marine detachment at the Pensacola Naval Air Station.
And then he was assigned to the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island
and we were there when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. And from there,
he was on the faculty of the Naval War College. And from there, he was ordered
overseas to the Pacific Theater and fought in the Marianas and Okinawa
Campaigns during World War II. He fought on Saipan and Tinian. Tinian was the
island on which we established the first land airfield close enough to bomb the
Japanese home islands without having to use an aircraft carrier. So it was a
turning point of the war in that sense. And Okinawa was the last major battle of
World War II in the Pacific. He participated in all of that, and came home to retire
as a brigadier general after the war was over.
J: Awesome. TMP-051; Montague; Page 4
S: This is something I was actually excited to ask about, but did you have any
special family sayings that your parents, maybe, often used or that maybe you
yourself use?
M: I’m not sure that I can remember anything of that nature. What I wanted to tell
you about in particular was the origin of my family in this county. Are you ready
for that?
J: Oh, please.
S: Oh, yes. Of course.
M: Peter Montague was the immigrant Montague who came to Jamestown in 1621
at the age of eighteen, probably about close to your ages. He was born in a place
called Boveney Lock on the Thames River in England, within sight of Windsor
Castle. And he was from a family that had been relatively prosperous and had
given land on which a church was built in that town. But, I think hard times may
have come to the family, leading him to decide to immigrate to Virginia at a fairly
young age. And he came over to Jamestown on the ship Charles, commanded
by Sir Francis Wyatt, who was later to become one of the colonial governors of
Virginia. And then after some time in Jamestown, he settled in Nansemond
County, was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses from that county, and
then moved to what is today Middlesex and Lancaster Counties. In 1651,
Lancaster County was formed, and at that time, it included all of the land that is
present-day Middlesex County. And he was elected to the Virginia House of
Burgesses as the first burgess to represent this county in 1651 or [165]2. And he TMP-051; Montague; Page 5 died in 1659. He is buried across the river in today’s Lancaster County near
Lancaster Courthouse, and has a tombstone given to him as a three hundredth birthday present by his descendants that is still marking his grave. He also had a house near this gravesite, and the foundation ruin of that house is still visible.
The upper structure is gone, but it’s a brick foundation and it still can be seen.
And from it, you can tell the size of the house that he lived in. He owned land on both sides of the river, and Middlesex County was split off of Lancaster County in
1673. It became a separate county. But, for those twenty-one, twenty-two years,
Middlesex was part of Lancaster, and he was the first elected legislative representative from what is today Middlesex County. And the reason I wanted to bring this up is because this set of facts was omitted from the recent history book that Larry Chowning about Middlesex County, which upset me a bit because I thought it was a pretty foundational set of circumstances that should have been included in any book of that nature that was attempting to do what he did do very well, in most respects. He wrote up other Montagues, but he didn’t bother to focus on the beginning one. He was, to some extent, the start of a political dynasty in Virginia of sorts, because my namesake, great-grandfather Robert
Latney Montaguem also lived in Middlesex County at a farm near Waterview, just about seven, eight miles up the river from where we are now, and was active in politics in Virginia in the period before the Civil War, and was elected to the
Virginia legislature and to the Office of Lieutenant Governor of Virginia before the
Civil War. And had an eight hundred-acre farm in Middlesex County. He was very involved in the buildup to the secession of Virginia from the Union. He was a TMP-051; Montague; Page 6 delegate from Middlesex County to the Secession Convention, and presided over that convention at the time that the actual ordinance of secession was adopted to remove Virginia from the Union. And it was a contested vote because West
Virginia, at that time, was still part of the state of Virginia. And so, it was a very serious issue and one that was not lopsided. There was a significant number of people on both sides of it. West Virginia eventually seceded from Virginia on account of what happened. He subsequently was elected to the Confederate
Congress and represented Middlesex County in the Confederate Congress. And because of his prominence in the Confederacy, he found it advisable to move his family from Waterview, which was on the river, to a safer location in Campbell
County, Virginia, near the present-day city of Lynchburg. And, for that reason, my grandfather, Andrew Jackson Montague was born in Campbell County, Virginia in the autumn of 1862. The family stayed there until after the war was over and they were able to return to Middlesex. In the aftermath of the Civil War, gonna call it the Reconstruction period, they eventually lost the farm by the time my great-grandmother died. And so, my grandfather was raised relatively poor, as were a great many Virginians after the Civil War. His name was Andrew Jackson
Montague and he had roots in Middlesex County, but he didn’t live here during his active life. He earned his way through law school at the University of Virginia and then started practicing in Danville, Virginia, which is over on the south edge of Virginia near North Carolina, quite far west of here. And he was the most prominent Montague of all the Montagues there are in the history of Middlesex, or the whole country, for that matter. He was active in the election of Grover TMP-051; Montague; Page 7
Cleveland as the President of the United States and, as a result, became appointed a United States Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, and then was elected out of that position to be Attorney General of Virginia in 1898, moved to Richmond at that year, and lived in Richmond for the rest of his life. And in
1902, he was elected Governor of Virginia and ran for the Senate in 1906, but lost to a man named Thomas Staples Martin, who was a railroad lawyer and backed by the railroad business interests. And it was a vigorously contested primary. It was the first popular primary in the history of Virginia, and he had helped to get it established to have a primary while he was governor, among other things that he did while he was governor. He lost the primary and became
Dean of the University of Richmond Law School for a while, and practiced law privately for a while, and then ran for Congress from Richmond, what is today known as the Third District of Virginia and represented Richmond in Congress for the rest of his life. He was elected Congress for twenty-five years and died in office in 1937. But before he died, he and my grandmother bought our home here in Urbanna planning to retire. But, back in those days, Congressman didn’t get very big pensions and there was no Social Security, and so there was not much to retire on. But, they had bought the home I live in in Urbanna thinking they might be able to retire, and then he died before they did. He never lost an election while after being initially elected to Congress. He was seventy-five years old at the time of his death. My grandmother kept the home in Urbanna until she died, and my parents inherited it in 1951. And that’s somewhat the history of our family in the county other than myself. My father and I both have been on the TMP-051; Montague; Page 8
vestry of this church, where we’re sitting today. And in the old days, the vestry
was somewhat of a political entity before Middlesex County existed as a county.
The vestry existed as a parish for Christ Church, Middlesex. It was after
Lancaster County was formed but before Middlesex County was formed. And
one of the original founders of this parish was a Montague. My parents lived in
Urbanna until 1978, and I’ve been in charge of the house there since then. And I
have been director of the Ralph Wormeley Branch of what was known as the
Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities for a great many years, is
now called Preservation Virginia. And it owned the tobacco storehouse that you
visited earlier this morning for sixty years. And that building was sold to the town
of Urbanna to become a visitor center by the A.P.V.A., Preservation Virginia. I
was director of the branch, while it was owning the building, for a longer period of
time than any other person ever was director of it. My parents had served in that
position as well—both my parents—and were active in the parish here as well.
So, that is pretty much the history of our family’s involvement in Middlesex
County, other than sailing and things like that on the Rappahannock River, or
paddling the Dragon Run and things that people come here to do.
S: That’s amazing. Thank you for telling us that. That was really amazing. During
the holidays, how did you and your parents, for example, celebrate holidays such
as maybe Halloween or something to that effect?
M: Oh, I went trick-or-treating [Laughter] and we usually made a nice feast out of
Thanksgiving and Christmas. Our home has been open for the Christmas House TMP-051; Montague; Page 9
Tour one of the times and things like that. These were focal points of the year
around here, as they are practically everywhere.
J: What exactly is a Christmas tour? What do you mean by that?
M: In the holiday season, people are asked to open their homes for a tour that is a
fundraiser for a local charity. And this year, my son’s home is open for it. He lives
in the house next door to mine in Urbanna. Both of us also have homes in
Alexandria, Virginia.
J: What time of the year do you live here? And what time of the year do you live in
Alexandria? Is there any particular—?
M: I’m back and forth every week. I used to practice law in Urbanna. For forty years,
I had a law office and it was in a building that you may have seen when you were
touring. It was built in 1747 and it was the plantation overseer’s house for
Landstown Plantation, which the town of Urbanna kind of grew up around. And
it’s on the National Register, as is our home in Urbanna. I came here to practice
law in 1964 and practiced until 2004. So, I was working here one day a week—a
law office, though—and I was always back and forth. And I’m a private pilot and I
used to fly into Rosegill Airstrip to do my one day a week office hours in Urbanna
when the weather was good. And that was part of what was fun about it.
[Laughter] But, I had a general civil practice here in Urbana. It began with an
office over top of the garage at our home and I eventually bought the building
that I practiced in. And it was owned by two signers of the Declaration of
Independence- Francis Lightfoot Lee and Richard Henry Lee and also Eli Arthur TMP-051; Montague; Page 10
Lee, the same as Landstown because it was the plantation overseer’s house for
Landstown, and had the same ownership pedigree for quite a number of years. It
was also owned by Major Robert Beverley and built Ralph Wormeley III of
Rosegill. So, it actually got on the National Register before Sandwich did.
Sandwich—I don’t know whether you were told you were looking at it—was
named for the Earl of Sandwich, who invented the sandwich, and was first lord of
the admiralty during the Revolution and got part of the blame for why the British
lost the Revolution. And he was probably the most prominent Montague of all
time in terms of his place in history, one of them anyway. And that’s why my
grandfather chose to name the house for him.
S: You mentioned that you used to be a private pilot?
M: Yeah, I owned an airplane for twenty-seven and a half years, and I flew it to
Alaska once. That was the height of my flying career. I was an Assistant Attorney
General of Kentucky for three and a half years. I learned to fly when I was
working in Kentucky, partially so I could fly home on weekends from Frankfurt,
Kentucky to Urbanna, which I could do sometimes nonstop in good tailwind
conditions. I owned that airplane for two years with my boss, the Attorney
General, who did not have a pilot’s license. And, as a result, I flew him in a race
for Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky in 1963, which he lost. And that’s why I
moved to Alexandria to practice law in 1964. I flew thirty-two hundred hours
before I gave up flying. I survived three in-flight engine failures, that were not
total failures, but partial.
S: How did you survive them? TMP-051; Montague; Page 11
M: Well, the engine never stopped, and I was able to find an airport fast enough to
land safely each time. But, they’d lost power on one cylinder in two cases and
lost oil pressure in one. And the engine never stopped running, but it lost enough
power that I was coming down at a hundred feet a minute and not going back up.
I made it to an airfield with five minutes of altitude to spare on the closest escape
that I had from having to make an off-airfield landing. I never had to declare an
emergency, though. But, I decided to give up flying after the attack on
Washington, because I was using a close in-airfield to Washington and it became
too difficult. The developers, also, were developing the airfields that I’d been
using. I worked as an Assistant Attorney General of Kentucky for three years and
it doesn’t have anything to do with Middlesex County, so I don’t know how much
you would want me to say about that.
S: Well, you can talk about anything you would really, anything—
M: Well, it was fairly interesting. I was in the navy for two years and served on a
destroyer when my grandmother died—my mother’s mother—and she was from
Kentucky. I wasn’t able to go to her funeral, so I was invited to come out to
Kentucky to visit her sister after I got out of the navy in 1958. On that visit, she
had a small cocktail party for me to meet some Kentucky cousins that she was
able to round up. One of whom turned out to later be the Attorney General of
Kentucky that I would work for after I finished law school. And we met at that
party, and I had never been in a law office before in my life. I didn’t know what I
was getting into going to law school, because my father had not been a lawyer.
And I went to his office and he showed me what his office was like, his library, TMP-051; Montague; Page 12 and what his practice consisted of. And he was a member of the Kentucky
Legislature at the time. And so he talked to me about his politics. Back in those days, Happy Chandler was Governor of Kentucky and he had been a good governor during his first term, but became corrupt in his second. And John
Breckenridge, the man I worked for, was in the faction of the Democratic Party in
Kentucky that wanted to clean house and do better than that. And he decided to run for Attorney General of Kentucky in the winter of 1959. And he invited me out to go with him on his campaign in April of [19]59 when I was in my first year of law school, which I did. I had a fascinating experience with him going everywhere he went, seeing everything he did, and hearing everything that was said. And it was all honest and idealistic and aboveboard politics like it’s supposed to be, but isn’t always. And he got me somewhat inspired. I came back to law school and decided I had to overcome being beastly shy about making a public speech. So, I entered the University of Virginia Public Speaking Championship Contest that spring sponsored by the Jefferson Society, and gave a talk about Kentucky politics based on my experience with him that April, and I won. And I beat Teddy
Kennedy in the process. He came in second and he’d been the Moot Court
Champion in law school that spring. And so, I got somewhat emotionally tilted toward Kentucky at that point. He won the primary by the largest vote anybody ever got for the Office of Attorney General in the history of Kentucky and invited me back out to work on a legal research project about what the Office of Attorney
General was like and how it could be improved. Spent two weeks on that in the summer of [19]59. He submitted my rough draft to the Kentucky Law Journal to TMP-051; Montague; Page 13 see if they would be interested in publishing it. They said yes, if he would come back and polish it up into a proper law review article, they would publish it as a leading article. I did not make the law review at the University of Virginia law school, so it was quite an accomplishment for me to get a leading article published as a student while I was in law school. And I learned more about the
Office of Attorney General writing that article that most of the people who worked there for years knew about it. And so, by the time I’d finished that, he decided he wanted to offer me a job as an Assistant Attorney General of Kentucky, but he had to get the legislature to repeal a four-year experience requirement in order to do so. And he did, and I couldn’t say no at that point. I had received an offer from a very fine New York law firm, which I turned down to go to work for him. So, I ended up going out there and working on—right off the bat—a very serious case involving the corruption of the community over across the river from Cincinnati,
Ohio, known as Newport, Kentucky, where the local public officials like sheriff, commonwealth attorney, and so forth had been corrupted by something like the mafia. The local administerial association came to the Governor of Kentucky, who at that point was Governor Combs, and asked for his help in getting rid of these corrupt local officials. And he appointed a special commissioner to conduct ouster hearings to get rid of them. And these hearings were just getting started when I joined the staff at the attorney general’s office, and I was assigned to work with the senior assistant attorney general who was handling those ouster proceedings. He upped and died of an accident from a defective chimney flue of carbon monoxide poisoning, just after having finished the trial phase of all of TMP-051; Montague; Page 14 these ouster hearings. And I was the one in the office who had been helping him.
So suddenly, I was assigned to prosecute all the appeals that arose from these hearings. These crooked local politicians were represented by some of the most expensive lawyers in Kentucky, and we won every one of the appeals, got rid of all the corrupt local officials, and got Newport straightened out and cleaned up. It was one of the most satisfying things I ever did as a lawyer. But it was just the beginning. I represented five departments of state government as their legal counsel and edited the published opinions volume of the office’s opinions that we wrote, advising various state agencies and officials. Practiced a lot of criminal appeals other than the ouster proceeding appeals over the time I worked there.
And I learned to fly, we bought an airplane, and went through the lieutenant governor’s race. And my boss was later reelected Attorney General of Kentucky, again, four years after losing the lieutenant governor’s race, then was elected to
Congress for six years after that, and died kind of young in 1979. But, I chose to move to Alexandria because I was really more from Virginia than I was from
Kentucky. But, my mother’s side of my family were from Kentucky from the beginning. So, I had roots there as well. My wife that I married, I met while I was working in Kentucky. She was from Louisville, Kentucky, so it was a very influential time in my life. But, I settled in Alexandria partially because I wanted to work with an urban historic district as a lawyer, and Alexandria has a very beautiful historic district: about a square mile of a fifteen square mile city is an historic district there. It was established as such back in the mid-[19]40s, and it had serious issues in the [19]60s that I helped deal with and saved some very TMP-051; Montague; Page 15 important buildings from demolition, and helped to get a waterfront park system established. I ran for city council there, and I got through a Democratic primary, but lost in the general election trying to get the waterfront park system established. And we did get it established, even though I lost the election. We sued the city as well conducted politics over it. They had allowed a developer to build four nineteen-story high-rises on a flood plain piece of land on the Potomac
River that actually belonged to the federal government because it had once been part of the bottom of the river, which was owned by the state of Maryland when it ceded the District of Columbia to the federal government for the seat of government. And so, the federal government had acquired Maryland’s title to the bottom of the river at the time that happened, in 1791. The whole Alexandria waterfront was a mixture of filled land and vast land that existed before 1791.
Everywhere that it was filled was subject to the federal title claim, and we were able to get waterfront parks established where all of that filled land was, pretty much all along the city’s waterfront, after 1973. And the matter is still pending before the city government in respect to some parcels that have not yet been finally resolved. But it has led to a lot of parkland being established on the city of
Alexandria’s waterfront, which was one of the most significant things I did as a citizen and a preservation lawyer in Alexandria. In addition to saving the Lyceum, which is the city’s museum and was the first bicentennial center in the country to be opened back in the [19]70s as a result of having been saved by an effort that I organized as President of the Historic Alexandria Foundation. And I served as
Chairman of the city’s Historic Restoration and Preservation Commission for TMP-051; Montague; Page 16
twelve years, was a member of it for more years than that, and lawyer for it
before I was a member of it. ‘Cause a lot of my practice in Alexandria was as a
specialist in historic preservation law. I taught at the University of Virginia and I
had a lot of pro bono work as a result of it, but it was not what I did to make a
living, particularly. I had to do a general civil practice that involved a lot else to
make a living, but the preservation was the spice, or the inspiration, for my law
practice. And it was applicable in Urbanna, too, because I was involved with the
A.P.V.A. here. Bought my little office building in 1976 when it was a crumbling
wreck and had been vacant for ten years, and would’ve been torn down by just
about anybody but someone like me. But when we discovered the history of the
building, we knew it should be saved, and that’s what we did. So, preservation
happens wherever you are, so to speak. Really, a lot of it is going on in Virginia,
all over the state of Virginia. And that’s what I’ve been involved with as much as
anything. I ran for the legislature twice, but I wasn’t elected. I haven’t been able
to carry on the family political tradition by winning any elections to public office,
but I’ve held some appointed positions in Alexandria.
J: So, when did you first start getting into politics?
M: Well, I ran for an office when I was in college, [Laughter] but I didn’t get elected.
I’ve never been elected. And I’d ran for an office in college and I ran for one in
law school. I tried three times in the city of Alexandria. The last time was for the
legislature in 1977. There were reapportionments that created seats that
Alexandria shared first in 1965 with Fairfax County, and then in [19]77 with
Arlington County. And I ran too soon in [19]65, but in [19]77, I did run a fairly TMP-051; Montague; Page 17
strong race. But, there was a woman and two men and the woman won. And it
was back in the days when the E.R.A. was a big issue and she was the chief
lobbyist for the E.R.A. in Richmond. She had a lot more organization than I had.
She got the seat and it was abolished in the next reapportionment. But, the
person who had initially won that seat ran for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, but
didn’t get elected, statewide. So, it was a seat that might have been a
springboard, but it didn’t turn out to be that for me.
J: And you had also mentioned that you’d been in the navy for a couple years?
M: Yeah, I participated in the recent little book that’s come out on alumni of Christ
Church School that served in the military. And I don’t know whether you have
access to that or not, but I have a chapter in that book. I did not fight in any wars.
I served from 1956 to [19]58 and I graduated from the Navy R.O.T.C. program at
the University of Virginia in 1956. I taught American history at the Naval Prep
School at Bainbridge, Maryland. Then, I was asked to serve on a destroyer and
served on a destroyer for my second year in the navy and had a Mediterranean
cruise and a Caribbean cruise on the destroyer. I had a very maturing year on
that destroyer because of turnover of personnel. I served in every department of
the ship except supply in the course of thirteen months. Qualified as an officer of
the deck underway, so I had a pretty good basic grounding in what it is to be a
naval officer, and ended up serving in the reserves for twenty three years, and
retired as a commander.
J: Okay. Thank you for your service. TMP-051; Montague; Page 18
M: And that’s what’s written up in the Christ Church book. But it was interesting in
another way, because it was back in the days when you could not serve in the
military if you were gay. And the ship I served on had an officer on it, who had
been a high school classmate of mine, who went to Yale. Was a Phi Beta Kappa
graduate at Yale, very smart. And as an ensign, he had been signed to this ship
and had become the operations officer—very responsible position on the ship—
and had done a really good job. On the cruise we did to Europe, we were
assigned to an exercise north of the Arctic Circle, where it was very cold. And he
got pneumonia and was so ill, he had to take to the bed. And the captain made
him get up and go back to work before he was well enough to do so. And he had
a relapse, and got so sick that he had to be sent ashore to a hospital. I got
reassigned, at that point, from the gunnery department to the communications
office, which was part of the operations department. And then we cruised on
down to the Mediterranean and the captain had reassigned the engineering
officer of the ship to be the operations officer. And the newly assigned operations
officer—when we got finally to Greece for that first liberty port—went up on the
bridge and got on the one mc-intercom system and made an announcement,
make all preparations for getting underway, when we were not supposed to get
underway for a week. And the captain suddenly realized something might be the
matter with him. Well, he turned out to be having a nervous breakdown because
he couldn’t handle the job of operations officer. He ended up getting retired from
the navy for mental illness. We shuffled officers again; I wound up becoming the
damage carole assistant and acting engineering officer on the ship. And I was a TMP-051; Montague; Page 19 history major, but that’s how I got to serve in all the departments on the ship in one year [Laughter] because of those two officers having, so to speak, fallen by the wayside. The first officer, the one that I mentioned, was a high school classmate of mine. And the reason that I know he was gay, is that one of his Yale classmates, who was also a high school classmate, told me that that was the case. He knew him a lot better than I did. I think the captain was mistreating him because he suspected him of being gay. And years later, this other classmate told me that he had settled in Atlanta. And I was flying through Atlanta on a business trip, and I decided to try to call him up. And he answered the phone. He had become an interior designer and had never married, and was living in
Atlanta. And we had a long conversation about the experience on the ship. He utterly despised the commanding officer of that ship for the way he had been treated. And he didn’t tell me himself that he was gay, but it was somewhat apparent from what other people told me and some of the other circumstances. I became convinced from that experience that it was quite all right for someone to be gay and be in the military, ‘cause he certainly was doing his job and probably was one of the most effective officers on the ship. And it didn’t matter if he was gay. But it may have had something to do with why he succumbed to pneumonia and got as sick as he did, because he was not, maybe, quite as physically robust as some of the other officers on the ship. But he was able to pass the physical to get through Navy R.O.T.C. And his father had been a captain in the navy and so forth. He died of lung issues at a younger age than normal, and it was partially due to what had happened to him on that ship. TMP-051; Montague; Page 20
J: Because of the pneumonia?
M: It damaged his lungs . . . I didn’t mean to get into all that if you weren’t interested
in that sort of stuff.
J: Oh, no. We’re interested in anything you have to say, quite honestly.
M: Well, this is related to Middlesex because of Christ Church School publishing that
book. The education system between public and private schools is the biggest
employer in Middlesex County these days. [Laughter]
S: Also, if it’s anything that you feel is important, we feel like it’s plenty important.
M: Well, it was certainly important to me to be an American naval officer. I was
proud of surviving my year on that destroyer, and it matured me a lot and made
me a more effective person from having been through that kind of experience.
And it also made me feel I could be of some use to the navy. That’s why I stayed
in the reserves as a ready reservist for twenty-three years and took the risk of
being called back, but I never was. And I was really glad because I was not a big
enthusiast for the Vietnam War, to be honest about it. I felt it was not sufficiently
justified . . . And so, I was hoping I wouldn’t get called back and I managed to get
through without being called back. But, my brother fought in Vietnam. He was an
executive officer of a fleet tugboat in Vietnam. And I had quite an experience
over there.
S: Did he tell you about his experience in Vietnam? TMP-051; Montague; Page 21
M: He’s written up in the book on Christ Church School, too, The Christ Church
School Military Veterans. And his experience was considerably more demanding
than mine in terms of what he went through. He stayed thirty years in the
reserves and retired as a captain. And he was injured in Vietnam, diving on a
ship that . . . There was an underwater explosion while he was underwater and it
damaged his ear. And he is now living in Gloucester County and retired as a
captain from the reserves. But he was raised here in Urbanna.
J: That’s neat. Did you leave the navy for any particular reason?
M: Well, sort of. I was eligible to retire with a pension after I made commander, and I
got passed over for captain. And so, I decided to stop. But I might have stayed
and seen whether I got passed over again, but I decided to call it quits at that
point.
J: And you went to school?
M: I never had a command, which is part of why I didn’t think I would be likely to get
selected for captain. The program I was in, I was executive officer of a large
surface division, and they abolished the surface division program just as I
would’ve had a chance to become the commanding officer of it. When I didn’t get
a chance to do that, that pretty much limited my prospects for promotion. But I
enjoyed my experience in the Navy Reserves. I had some very enjoyable two
week actitures, in various places from Key West to New Port, Rhode Island and
several ship port two weeks’ experiences. So, all in all, it was something I’m glad
I did. TMP-051; Montague; Page 22
S: . . . Now, I was wondering, do you have any community traditions that you
participate in in Christ Church?
M: Well, I’ve been on the vestry twice here at this parish, and I think I told you I was
the director of the Ralph Wormeley Branch of the A.P.V.A. Because I live in
Alexandria, most of my community activity has been up there. I’ve been
President of the Old Town Civic Association. I’ve been President of the Northern
Virginia Conservation Council. I’ve been President of the Conservation Council of
Virginia. I’ve been chairman of the Board of Visitors of Gunston Hall. I’ve been
Chairman of the Alexandria Historical Restoration and Preservation Commission
for twelve years, and I’ve been a trustee of the A.P.V.A. as a state trustee. And
I’ve been a Chairman of the Alexandria Commission on the Bicentennial of the
U.S. Constitution, Chairman of the city’s Environmental Policy Commission, and
the city’s Beautification Commission. So, I’ve been doing stuff in the community,
but most of it’s been in Northern Virginia.
S: And with all of those—
M: And I’m on the board, right now, of a university called the Frontier Nursing
University. It’s out in Kentucky, and it’s an outgrowth of my roots in Kentucky. It
trains nurse practitioners and nurse midwives to go all over the world to less
fortunate countries that can’t afford doctors. So, I’m doing things with health
charity work, too. TMP-051; Montague; Page 23
S: When you were in the preservationist . . . I can’t remember which one you were
saying. But was there any specific time that stood out to you, like any specific
event that dealt with that? . . . Should I reword the question?
M: Maybe try again.
S: Okay. When you were on the preservationist board, were there any events that
you participated in—
M: Yeah, there was one in particular I might just give you as an illustration. The city
has a building called the Lyceum, the city of Alexandria’s museum, currently. But,
back in the [19]70s, it was looking dilapidated and a contract for demolition had
been let. The community got in an uproar over it and thought it should be saved.
And I was President of the Historic Alexandria Foundation at the time, and I led
the drive to persuade the city of Alexandria to acquire the building with the use of
the imminent domain power, which was the first time in the history of Virginia that
the imminent domain power had ever been used for the sake of historic
preservation. And we won that vote at two in the morning before the city council
after we had raised thirty thousand dollars from the private sector. I had to go to
the wrecking contractor to get the key of the building. I took that and our check
for thirty thousand dollars to the city council chamber and said, gentlemen, don’t
make me give this key back to the wrecking contractor in the morning. And on
the first vote, it was a tie: three to three, with one abstention. And one of the
people who voted against us moved to reconsider, thinking he would pick up the
abstainer. We picked up the abstainer and won that building by a four-three vote
at two in the morning. And it became the first bicentennial center in the country to TMP-051; Montague; Page 24
open for the bicentennial of the Revolution. And it’s one of the most beautiful
Greek revival buildings in the country. It was on the cover of the Metropolitan
Museum’s book on the subject of Greek Revival in America. And it’s on the
National Register and so forth. And it’s a very beautiful building at the corner of
Prince and Washington Streets in Old Town Alexandria. And I also worked with
saving the Lloyd House, another building on Washington Street, that did not get
quite so close to the wrecking ball, but helped us structure an elaborate funding
package to save it involving a private foundation grant, state, local, and federal
money from the H.U.D. Open Space Program. And it was the first time I ever
made a fee as a lawyer for doing something for historic preservation, because
the real estate settlement for the acquisition of that building by the Alexandria
Historical Restoration and Preservation Commission occurred in my law office . .
. And I did litigation over preservation issues, as well, as a lawyer. Urban renewal
was an issue in the [19]60s, and it was tearing down a lot of historic buildings on
King Street in Alexandria. And we litigated the issue of whether they were
blighted enough to justify urban renewal. And the upshot was that urban renewal
policy eventually shifted so that it favored preservation instead of demolition, but
not until after we had lost three blocks’ worth of King Street. But, from then on,
we didn’t have any more urban renewal in Alexandria on King Street.
J: So, how has Alexandria changed historically? All the buildings that you’ve
saved—?
M: Well, it’s a fairly involved story, and I don’t know how much time you have for me
to tell you, but my aunt wrote the book, Seaport in Virginia: George Washington’s TMP-051; Montague; Page 25
Alexandria. She is buried here in this cemetery: Gay Montague Moore. And she
was the pioneering preservationist in Alexandria. She and her husband were
stationed in Washington in the army. And they bought their home in Alexandria
back when Old Town Alexandria was the wrong side of the tracks, and restored
it. And it was the first restoration of an eighteenth-century building in Old Town,
to sort of start the ball rolling for preserving an entire historic district that is now a
square mile. But, she got inspired to write the book, and it was published in 1949
and republished at the time of the Bicentennial in 1976 by the University of
Virginia Press. It’s one of the better, if not the best, book ever written on old
Alexandria houses. And she was very active in getting the historic district
ordinance for the city passed, put in place, and implemented in her day. And she
was one of the first members of the commission I later became chairman of. She
was one of the founding trustees of the Historic Alexandria Foundation, and she
was honorary life member number one of the Alexandria Association, which is an
antiquarian society in Alexandria. She was very much responsible for my moving
to Alexandria and taking the level of interest that I did in historic preservation.
She had no children and she eventually left me her home there, that she had
bought and restored back in the [19]30s. And that’s where I still live when I’m in
Alexandria.
J: How about Middlesex? How has that changed since you’ve lived here?
M: Well, it’s still a rural county, but it’s not as rural as it was. It’s not growing too fast.
I think it’s assimilating the growth that it gets reasonably well, but it is still—I think
most people want it to stay rural; they don’t want it to become an urban county. TMP-051; Montague; Page 26
And it’s managed to avoid that up to now by not having a sewer serving the
entire county. Only the town of Urbanna has a sewer system. The rest of the
county does not have a sewer yet. And that has throttled development here quite
a bit. And that’s, as far as I’m concerned, good. I’m a conservationist-
preservationist; I like it the way it is. And I’m not an advocate of rapid growth at
all. I think that the fact that we’ve had slow growth here has been very good and
has preserved a lot of what’s important in the county.
J: So you like the rural type of—?
M: I like it the way it is. I don’t want to see it become an urban county. But it’s a very
lovely place to live and people are finding that out. Thirty thousand people will
show up in Urbanna for Oyster Festival. [Laughter] They will discover how nice it
is, and some of them will decide they want to come back here and stay longer,
but that’s part of what’s going on. That’s one of the biggest fundraisers for all the
local charities.
S: I know that oysters are a big part of the community, and I was wondering if
oystering was ever a hobby of yours or if you—?
M: My brother has farmed oysters on a limited scale. I’ve never tried to do it, but I
did invest in a company that does try to raise oysters and help restore oyster
beds in a modest way. And I certainly like to eat ‘em. Everybody wishes there
were more of ‘em because we’ve had a terrible decline, which is starting to turn
around. And the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Virginia Marine Resources
Commission, and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science are all working on this TMP-051; Montague; Page 27
problem, trying to restore oyster beds and get the oysters back to work filtering
the water in the bay so they don’t have to clean it up. Part of what killed the
oysters was two diseases, called MSX and Dermo. And some oysters have now
developed an immunity to those diseases, so that’s part of how we’re getting
somewhat of a comeback. A lot of them were killed by siltation from development
runoff and farm runoff, and that’s still happening. So, we still have a lot of work to
do to try to get oysters to come back more than they have, ‘cause what we have
now is a very small percentage of what there once was, even with the comeback
that we have had. And it is one of the foundations of the local economy.
J: How much does pollution affect that?
M: A lot. Oysters can be killed by mud. Sediment kept covering them up; they will
smother and die. And that’s certainly one form of pollution. And they are killed by
other things that run off the land besides just plain mud. They’re vulnerable to
diseases, which are waterborne.
J: Is there anything being done about it?
M: Oh, yes! The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has got a very active program going
and there are oyster farming operations. There’s one on the York River that I’ve
seen a demonstration of recently that has been fairly successful at raising
oysters big enough to eat. [Laughter] They’ve been at it long enough that they’ve
gotten them growing big enough to eat. And lots of baby oysters are being
planted, not all over, but in lots of places on the bay now to try to bring them back
because they served a very beneficial purpose aside from being good to eat. TMP-051; Montague; Page 28
J: Is there any particular way that you like your oysters, like any family recipes or?
M: Oyster stew, I guess, is my favorite. I can actually probably cook and oyster stew
myself if I had to, but I’m not a particularly good cook. [Laughter] It’s not my forte.
But that’s the way I would try to cook oysters if I were gonna do some myself.
J: Yeah. Did your family make oysters traditionally?
M: Yeah. We would have oyster stew for Christmas sometimes.
J: That’s cool.
M: And maybe at Thanksgiving, too. Any month with an R in it, it’s considered legal
and proper to eat oysters. Don’t eat them in the months with no Rs because
that’s when they’re reproducing. And if you want more oysters, you can’t eat
them in those months, period.
S: Now, I remember earlier you were telling us the story about how you came about
getting that car. And I was wondering, did you have to refurbish it at all?
M: Yeah. My car collection started with a 1921 Leland-built Lincoln seven-passenger
touring car that I inherited from my grandfather’s first cousin in 1954, the year we
moved to Urbanna. It was originally bought by the Willard family that owned the
Willard Hotel in Washington. And Mr. Joseph Willard was Lieutenant Governor of
Virginia when my grandfather Montague was governor, and his wife was my
grandfather’s first cousin. And so, that was the connection that I had to the car.
When she died, her two children and their descendants didn’t think it would ever
run again, and didn’t want it, and said that I could be allowed to have it. I had TMP-051; Montague; Page 29 been dating the daughter of the executor of her estate and that’s how he knew I was a car nut without a car. Told me about Aunt Bell’s old Lincoln sitting in the shed on a farm out in Fairfax, Virginia and told me that, if I could get it out of there, I could have it. Probably he would arrange for me to get a title to it, which he did eventually because I went out and saw what it was and realized what it was. Leland-built Lincolns were the first model of Lincoln ever built and they were made for eighteen months before Ford bought the company. So, they’re very, very rare. There’re only seven thousand of them were made, and this one is now the oldest running Lincoln in the world. And I took it to college in 1955 at the
University of Virginia and that’s where I met Pierre Darden, who was the owner of the Packard. And his father was president of the university and he had a mother who was a Du Pont. So he had money to collect cars with while he was in college and so forth. He died trying to sail to Bermuda in 1959. And after he’d been missing at sea for two years, his father, who had been a classmate of my father’s and had served in the Marine Corps with him in World War I, it was a two- generation friendship that led to that Packard being given to me because I had had the Lincoln in college. And that’s why I’ve still got both of them, and they both still run, and they both look pretty good. They’re drivers, though; I don’t trailer them, except when I have to. They’re not clean on the bottom, but I try to keep them clean on the top. [Laughter] I subsequently inherited a [19]54 Pontiac station wagon that also has been in my family since new that I also still have.
And they’re all around here somewhere. But the Packard is the prettiest of the bunch. TMP-051; Montague; Page 30
S: Oh, yeah. That’s definitely an eye-catcher.
J: I agree. [Laughter]
M: It’s definitely a very lovely and sweet automobile and I have driven it over sixty
thousand miles. I’ve had it fifty-three years, so I don’t drive it a lot. It has a
123,000 miles on it.
J: Wow. I’m assuming it’s your favorite car that you have.
M: Well, the Lincoln is the most historic and it’s the one with the most family
connection. The Lincoln’s owners had two daughters. One of them married a son
of President Theodore Roosevelt, Kermit Roosevelt, and the other one married
an English nobleman. And so, they were a very prominent family. And that sort of
adds to its luster, so to speak. But it’s a very historic automobile entirely aside
from who owned it. But I’ve had it for sixty years now.
J: That’s really neat. Do you have any memories growing up connected to the river,
like fishing and things like that?
M: Yeah. I have a sixty year-old wooden motorboat that we bought new the year we
moved to Urbanna in 1954. It’s an Owens Cabin Cruiser, only twenty-one feet
long. But, my father had served in the Marine Corps with General Puller, who
lived in Saluda by the time they had both retired. I remember taking General
Puller fishing on that boat when it was practically brand new. And we were out on
the river, had gotten through fishing, and I was the anchor boy. And I was pulling
in the anchor, dropped the rope in the river, jumped in the river to retrieve the
rope, and managed to get the anchor back into the boat, whereupon General TMP-051; Montague; Page 31
Puller, the most decorated Marine in American history, pronounced me a hero
because I had jumped in with the stinging nettles to get the anchor rope and
survived the exercise. I don’t forget moments like that, and that’s part of what
motivated me to restore the boat in 2006. It’s on its sixth engine. And its bottom
had finally given out after fifty-two years and it was ready to sink. And I managed
to get it to a lift just in time to save it and get the bottom and the framing, and the
stern all replaced, but the sides and top are still original.
J: You still use it?
M: I use it. It doesn’t leak, but it was really ready to sink. But it’s part of what keeps
me coming to Urbanna. It’s just one of the good memories. I’ve cruised it from
here to Alexandria and back several times, which is quite a voyage in a twenty-
one foot boat. I also have a fifty year-old sailboat and we won in the Turkey
Shoot Regatta—first weekend in October—with that this year. I sail quite a bit.
It’s a Sparkman & Stephens design built in Holland that I’ve had for twenty-five or
thirty years now. I didn’t buy it new, though. But it’s one of the other reasons I
love to come to Urbanna: sailing, fishing, and paddling the Dragon.
J: Paddling the Dragon?
M: The Dragon is the other side of Middlesex County from the Rappahannock, and it
is the northernmost cypress swamp, or slough, in North America. And it’s flat
water, but it has a little current in it. And it’s riddled with beaver dams and fallen
tree trunks, and things, though it’s a bit of a challenge. I’ve been on the board of
the Friends of Dragon Run, a group that owns some land on the banks of the TMP-051; Montague; Page 32
Dragon that they been acquiring to try to save the stream from being messed up
by development. Their members are able to get access to the Dragon at their
properties and go paddling, which is one of the other reasons it’s fun to live in
Middlesex County: because of the Dragon. For paddlers, it’s quite a good
experience. And so, between the paddling on the Dragon and the sailing on the
Rappahannock, we got it pretty good that way. [Laughter]
[Break in Interview]
S: You said that the event with the anchor was what caused you to want to refurbish
that specific boat?
M: It was one of the memories, plus the cruises to Alexandria and back, cruises to
other places. I’ve been to Fredericksburg and back in it twice. I’ve been out in the
bay down to Mobjack Bay a number of times. Too many memories. I just didn’t
want to throw it away. And I ended up spending as much as I would’ve spent on
a new boat to get it restored, but I’ve got a boat that I enjoy more.
S: Is that also what got you into boating in general, or were you into it before that?
M: I started boating with my grandfather’s sixteen-foot cypress skiff. My
grandmother had saved that when my grandfather died. And it sank and sat on
the bottom of Urbanna Creek, but that preserved it. And it was made of cypress,
same kind of wood that grows in the Dragon. And she had it raised and
refurbished for my use when I was old enough to start going out on the river, or
the creek.
[Break in Interview] TMP-051; Montague; Page 33
M: But, anyway, I’ve lost my train of thought.
J: The cypress boat.
M: Oh, yeah. I learned to row in that boat and that was the first boat I ever had in
Urbanna. I sold it to a cousin in Saluda for a buck when I got through using it.
[Laughter] I don’t know whatever came of it after that, but it was a hundred years
old. It was an antique boat in its own right. Cypress lasts really well around here.
Worms don’t get into like they do in some other kinds of wood.
S: Was it like a proper boat or was it like—?
M: Sixteen feet long with planks running the full length of the boat, and it was a flat-
bottom skiff that was fairly stable and seaworthy for its size. I rode it around
Urbanna Creek for several years before I graduated to something lighter with an
outboard motor on it. [Laughter]
J: You mentioned it was your grandfather’s boat. Did you ever sail with him?
M: My grandfather died when I was not quite two, so I never had a chance to know
him that well. But I wrote a paper about him when I was at college that won the
history club essay contest in 1956, and was the inspiration for a Ph.D dissertation
by a doctoral candidate, who was a student when I was in law school that I knew.
It was published by the LSU Press and came out back in the [19]60s, called
Montague of Virginia by a man named Larsen.
J: That’s really neat. TMP-051; Montague; Page 34
S: Do you have any other memories connected with oysters or with the river that
you may not have—?
M: Well, I’ve probably touched on most of them. I’ve had some unfortunate
memories. If you want to hear one of them, I can tell you that I have a boat dock
at Urbanna Creek where I rent slips to people. And one of my tenants from a slip
had a Flying Scot sailboat and went out on Thanksgiving Day about five years
ago next month and was never seen alive again. And it’s the only fatality I’ve
ever experienced anything to do with on the Rappahannock River. But he went
out alone and the wind and weather were favorable when he went out, but the
wind, I think, shifted and got stronger and adverse to the direction he needed to
go in when he was ready to come back to the dock. And he was found with a
head injury. They think he got hit in the head by the boom. And the boat was
overturned in the river and his dead body had washed up on a beach at Locust
Grove Farm, which is a farm just down the river here, about five miles. And my
son and I retrieved his overturned boat from the river for his widow, using my
motorboat to tow it back to the dock. That’s another memory that is on the other
side of the coin, so to speak. But I’ve been through quite a few things with that
old boat. It was really one of the saddest experiences I’ve had on the river. My
son is a champion sailor of the Hampton Class. He’s won nationals seven times.
He helped me drag the boat to the beach, bail it out, and then tow it back to
Urbanna. It was overturned and he had to right it and bail it out. That was another
unforgettable experience on the Rappahannock River. I’ve run aground recently.
That was another type of sort of negative memory, but we turned out okay. The TMP-051; Montague; Page 35
day was just three months ago, maybe, this summer. I had been to a party
celebrating the memory of a member of the parish who died recently. It was at
his house and we had left the party to head home in the sailboat. And I had a
lady friend crewing with me who went on the wrong side of a buoy and ran
aground while she was steering the boat, and I didn’t catch the error in time to
prevent us from sticking. And we couldn’t get ourselves off and two motorboats
tried to pull us off; we were really stuck. And so we anchored the boat, one of the
motorboats took us ashore for several hours, we ate a meal, came back out, and
she was floating like nothing had ever happened. But, sometimes, when you run
aground, it’s not so good. The water happened to be flat and calm, no wind. We’d
been running on the motor. So, the boat wasn’t damaged and we were able to
get safely home. [Laughter] But we had to go back to the party and stay for three
more hours while the tide came in. But that’s one of the other kinds of things you
can have happen to you out on the river that’s not always . . . I’ve just started
getting my—I have two grandsons and one granddaughter and I’ve just given a
skiff to one of my grandsons this summer to sort of replay the tradition, but not
with the old cypress skiff of my grandfather’s, but a gift from his grandfather to
him. So, things like that are happening too.
J: What kind of boat did you pass down to him?
M: Well, I bought it at the Deltaville Maritime Museum. It was one of these charity
gifts that someone makes to the museum and they resell it for money for the
museum. It was just an eleven- or twelve-foot skiff that needed a small outboard TMP-051; Montague; Page 36
motor to make it move very well, but it could be rowed. And so, he’s been
learning to row it and I’m getting him a motor for next year.
J: You go fishing with him and things like that?
M: I have been, but I’m not a very lucky fisherman. I usually go with someone who’s
luckier than I am to really do it up right. [Laughter] I’ve had some great
rockfishing experiences out on the bay with friends who are good fisherman.
J: Do you all eat a lot of fish around here too, or no?
M: We usually get a good deal of it.
J: What’s your favorite? What’s your favorite fish meal?
M: Rockfish.
J: Rockfish?
M: Mm-hm.
J: How do you make it around here?
M: Well, you broil it with secret sauce. [Laughter] Don’t really have to have much of
a sauce. It’s pretty good just with lemon and butter.
S: I don’t know if you were joking or not, but secret sauce, is that like a family
tradition?
M: No. I’m not a very good cook, so I don’t have very many secrets. But I do cook
wild ducks. Waterfowl cooking is something I do know how to do. And we have
quite a few waterfowl around here, but I get mine from somewhere else. TMP-051; Montague; Page 37
S: Where do you get yours from?
M: Arkansas. We have a farm in Arkansas and that’s where I hunt ducks.
J: You do a lot of hunting?
M: Some. I keep a lab retriever dog for duck hunting. Up till now, I’ve been able to.
I’m getting to the point where I’m slowing down on hunting, but I’ve done quite a
bit of it . . . I’m in the farming business in Arkansas. We have a farm on the Red
River and that’s where the duck hunting is.
S: Do you prepare the ducks in any special way when you cook them?
M: Well, I usually cook duck breasts and they’re very simple to cook. I cook them
with the rice. I serve sort of a casserole with rice and duck meat cut up in it. And
sometimes I cook a whole duck and carve slices, but the breasts are much easier
to cook, much quicker. You have to put a duck in the oven for quite a while if
you’re gonna cook the whole duck.
S: Oh, and also I am curious, I didn’t know if you were done describing how do you
make the rockfish? Like how do you cook them?
M: Oh, you broil it in the oven and you don’t have to cook it very long. You don’t
want to burn it up, so it’s a matter of timing it right.
J: Is there anything else about your childhood that you’d like to mention growing up-
any games or songs or things that you played with?
M: [Laughter] Well, gosh. I don’t know. I certainly had a Lionel electric train set—if
that’s the kinda thing you’re talking about—and I passed that on to my TMP-051; Montague; Page 38
grandchildren. Some of it dates from my days as a kid. My father brought me up
hunting. We’ve hunted around here. When I practiced law here, I often took—as
part of my legal fee would be—hunting permission on a client’s farm, so I had
quite a few acres in Middlesex County where I had hunting permission. And I
used to hunt quail here, but they’re very scarce now. So, it’s mainly water fowl
these days. The hunting was something I used to do here with my father growing
up.
S: Did the quail used to be a lot more populous around here?
M: Very much more. Modern farming is not very conducive to quail survival. They
don’t leave enough food in the fields, or cover, and the quail need both. And so
they’ve declined. But there are a few coveys in the county, but they’re nothing
like what they once were.
J: Is there any other animal you’ve seen go through the same type of thing?
M: Well, there’re lots of deer and there’re quite a few turkeys, but I’ve never been
successful at killing either one of those types. And I have been on hunts, but I’ve
never killed a turkey or a deer. I have killed a few ducks and a few quail, but
much fewer quail than ducks.
J: Well, there aren’t many quail to be—
M: Well, they used to be plentiful when I was growing up. That’s what my father
used to take me out to do more than anything else. TMP-051; Montague; Page 39
J: Is there anything that was handed down to you that you’re gonna continue to
hand on down?
M: I still shoot my father’s hundred year-old shotgun when I’m going duck hunting.
It’s a Model 12 Winchester pump. [Laughter] And that’s part of the fun of duck
hunting: just knowing I’m using my father’s shotgun. I don’t always hit a duck, but
I shoot it anyway. I’m not as good a shot as he was. He was a marine who had to
know how to shoot well to save his own life. If he didn’t get them first, they might
get him.
J: How about any, not physical objects, but lessons that you’ve learned from your
parents or your grandparents? Any of those that you would pass on down or that
have affected you personally?
M: Gee.
J: I know it’s a deep question. [Laughter]
M: Well, I’ve been the person who was in charge of the older generation of my
family as they got ill and passed on. I guess that’s been an experience ‘cause
I’ve been, somewhat, the primary caregiver for my mother, my wife, and my aunt.
And that was a pretty involving experience in each case. I don’t know whether
that’s the kinda thing you’re talking about or not, but that’s something I had to
devote quite a bit of time and attention to because everyone in my family has had
their last illnesses, those three in particular. My mother primarily took care of my
father. She survived him by eighteen years. I don’t know whether that’s what you
were asking about or not. TMP-051; Montague; Page 40
J: No. That’s perfect. Just anything that has affected you and that—
M: Well, all of those affected me right much. It’s just part of life, though . . .
J: Do you have anything else?
S: I know that you’ve already been through, probably, most of the stories that you
feel are most influential in your life, but are there any other stories that you feel
that you might not have told that you find were very important in shaping the
experiences throughout your life? Anything?
M: I think that the life-shaping experiences, a lot of them occurred in the year I was
on that navy ship, and a lot of them occurred when I was working with John
Breckenridge in Kentucky. But then later on, I was with older lawyers in
Alexandria and Washington. Howard W. Smith, Jr. was who I started with in
Alexandria and Fontaine Brun in Washington. I had good mentoring
experiences with all of those older lawyers that I had contact with that were very
important in how I survived as a lawyer later on when I was on my own. I was
with a firm only for a relatively small fraction of the time I practiced law. I’ve been
a civil practitioner for most of the time, and I had to learn how to survive as such
from the older lawyers that I worked with.
S: Now, as we’re winding down the interview, is there any kind of question that we
haven’t asked that maybe you felt that—?
M: Well, I’ve written five published law review articles. One of them was in the
Virginia Law Review in 1965, and it was called “Planning for Preservation in
Virginia,” and it’s part of what established my reputation as a lawyer specializing TMP-051; Montague; Page 41
in historic preservation law. And eventually, it led to my getting a chance to teach
at the University of Virginia. But it, among other things, contained the first
published draft of the statute that created the Virginia Department of Historic
Resources. And that was something was that I felt was important and a
contribution.
S: Thank you.
J: Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.
[End of Interview]
Transcribed by: Austyn Szempruch, April 9, 2015
Audit edited by: Jessica Taylor, April 12, 2015
Final edited by: Jessica Taylor