Dennis Elgan Montgomery

Journalist Dennis Montgomery of Williamsburg, Virginia died October 29, 2020. The only child of Herbert E. and Marjorie L. Montgomery, he was born November 22, 1946 into a Navy family at Norfolk, Virginia, and was reared in Chula Vista, California; Honolulu, Hawaii; Pawtucket, Rhode Island; Norfolk; and Millington, Tennessee. Montgomery attended Matthew Fontaine Maury High School in Norfolk, was graduated from Millington Central High in 1964 and the University of Memphis in 1968, where as a summer relief newsman he began a long affiliation with The Associated Press and married Claudia Herrington. The couple joined Volunteers in Service to America, a War on Poverty program, and were community organizers in the Missouri Ozarks, based in Stone County. In 1970, he began a 20-year career with The AP, progressing from newsman in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Southern Illinois correspondent based in Centralia, to National Endowment for the Humanities Professional Journalism fellow at the University of Michigan law school in Ann Arbor, to Tennessee news editor at Nashville, to Ohio assistant chief of bureau at Columbus. Before divorcing in 1980, he fathered Charity Montgomery of Rocky Mount, North Carolina; Harmony Hunter of Toano, Virginia; and Honor McDonald of Richmond, Virginia. Montgomery became Arkansas chief of bureau in Little Rock in 1981, and married Joyce Kirby of Bel Air, Maryland, in 1982. They had met 20 years before in Surry County, Virginia, where, as an Eagle Scout, he had been a waterfront counselor at Pipsico Boy Scout Reservation near Claremont. Before their divorce in 2000, they were parents to Carla Pillsbury of Richmond; and Grace Montgomery of New London, Connecticut. During his AP years, he participated in the coverage of such events as the mass escape from Marion Federal Penitentiary, the Three Mile Island disaster, the death of Elvis Presley, the ouster of Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton, and the execution of Michael Marnell Smith. He was, however, best known for feature writing. He contributed to the college texts Excellence in Reporting, and Interpretive Reporting and was listed in Who's Who in America 1986-87, 1988-89; and Who's Who in American Media 1998-99. The AP promoted Montgomery to Virginia chief of bureau at Richmond in 1984, and he retired to Claremont in 1989 to free-lance, serving for a time as editor of and columnist for The Smithfield Times and later as managing editor of the Charlottesville Daily Progress. In that interlude he became a Claremont town councilman and vice mayor, and began research and writing for the unpublished Starving Times, among the first forthright accounts of the misery and cannibalism of Jamestown. In 1991 he joined the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation as senior staff writer and speechwriter, leaving in 1994 to resume free-lancing, to write A Link Among the Days, the Life and Times of the Reverend W. A. R. Goodwin, the Father of Colonial Williamsburg; to contribute to Colonial Williamsburg, the Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; to draft video scripts, and to write articles for such magazines as Virginia Business, and The Marine Corps League. He rejoined the foundation in 1999 as editor of Colonial Williamsburg, directed the operations of that popular history quarterly, and compiled and edited 1607: Jamestown and the New World. There, before leaving again in 2014, he met Robyn Eoff of Williamsburg, establishing a bond that endured for the remainder of his life. They married in 2020. In retirement he pursued interests in sailing, sports cars, reading, writing, and history, treasured the relationships of friends and family, including grandchildren Andrew Pillsbury, Elsie Hunter, and Catherine and Jameson McDonald, and sisters-in-law Jerrie Sudderth and Pam Salazar. His mother died in 2000, and his father in 2018. At his request, there is to be no funeral, but a memorial reception will be held when COVID restrictions are lifted.