I woke up this morning and I couldn’t get Robert Alexander Montgomery out of my head. I don’t know how he got there, but he did. Rob as we called him was a great friend I worked with at large hotel, many, many years ago. My first real job after high school. Rob took me under his wing. The dude always wore a three-piece to work and he was only eighteen. He taught me how to dress and act in a business environment.

We only spent a couple of years hanging out, driving around in his metallic green Olds 442 and man the beast flew like snot. On our days off we’d travel down to his parent’s cabin, at a lake an hour or two out of town. We’d hang or go water skiing. One time we hung out with a very famous folk group who were playing at the hotel. I introduced them to my parents who were fans. Got me in high esteem. My son hanging with a nearly defunct folk group.

Rob and I lost contact. However, one day I got a call from a mutual friend who told me he died in a freakish accident. He was racing from one end of a restaurant to the other with a tray held high; he slipped, fell through a glass window and hit the ground fifteen metres below. He didn’t stand a chance. I thought the phone call was a joke and never believed it until woke up with Robert Alexander Montgomery in my head forty-four years later. I did the research.

The first information I found was on Ancestry: Robert Alexander Montgomery born 23 Jul 1959,  passed away on 14 Apr 1979 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.  I had to dig more. I went to a newspaper database and found the very sad article in the Edmonton Journal.  Dead at nineteen. Racing without shoes. Wow, it’s true.

It was nineteen-seventy-nine. How would I know the truth? There wasn’t an internet or social media I could check back then. No way to confirm anything. You either believed someone or you didn’t. Information came from newspapers, TV or radio and if you didn’t catch the story on the day it happened, there’d be no way of finding out the truth unless you went to a library (in those days I had no idea what was in a library besides shhhhhh). I let it slide, thinking it can’t be true (maybe I just didn’t want to believe).

Then I was thinking.  A simple Google search  of my friend’s horrific death brought up nothing.  Has Robert Alexander Montgomery faded into nothing? Is his memory gone except in the eyes of his family?  If you can’t Google someone, does that mean they don’t exist. Do we discard pre-Google death unless it’s something so horrific it’s burned into a thousand minds?

Hopefully,  if I put this article out there Robert Alexander Montgomery moves into this century and Rob is not forgotten. Happy Birthday Pal.