For those of you that remember Victor “Monty” Montenegro

Please share.
----- Original Message -----
From: St Thomas Bacchanal
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2013 7:39 AM
Subject: Obituary for: Victor “Monty” Montenegro

This was taken off of Facebook and sent to me (and others) by the STT Bacchanal Committee.
Those of you that have been around for a long time (old Yacht Haven Days) will remember him.

Monty was a shipwright, sailor, guitarist, artist, adventure, friend and father.
Born Jan. 1936 - May 2013

This morning my father, Victor “Monty” Montenegro, has sailed unto death. Before you send your condolence message saying you are sorry for my families loss, don’t. We are not sorry. Yes, for us it sad to say goodbye to my father but sorry we are not for my father lived like no other man I know. And he was not sorry to die for he lived every moment, every day, every second.

All who have known ...my father have their stories of him. Many of you know of the man with the whales tooth that he would tell you he pulled from the jaws of his mother-in-law. You know the man with the quick joke, the friend of most everyone and anyone. The man with the guitar. The smile from ear to ear. The “hey baby” guy. The adventurer.

My father served in the Air Force which took his to Kansas, Alaska and England with B-52 nuclear bombers. After that he became an adventurer. He ended up in the Exuma Islands of the Bahamas working as part of a team that would track and retrieve the Cape Canaveral rocket launches of the 1950’s space race. Treasure hunters would come to the island looking for the reported buried treasure of Captain Drake so he and friends in the machine shop created fake silver crosses and left them buried. When they were found by American treasure hunters it caused an international incident as the British Crown claimed rights to the find. The English even sent their consular general from Miami to take hold of the treasure. Until, of course, it was found to be a hoax. My father and friends were never found out. I apologies to Queen Elizabeth on his behalf.

When the base commander discovered his Jamaican ex-girlfriend was in love with my father he sent him to the farthest place he could find: the Acension Islands which sit in the middle of the Atlantic equally far from Brazil as from Africa and the tracking point for the last stage of booster rockets. Here he made lifelong friends who would become a part of his adventures for decades. He also found his way to Brazil on leave where, at one point, he was a bartender in a whore house. He traveled South America and has the stories of girlfriends to mark each city visited.

My father became a sailor and would take ships across the Atlantic from the Caribbean to ports in the Mediterranean. Guitar in tow he would make his way from places like Gibraltar to Portofino, St. Tropez, Nice, Barcelona and Madrid. Everywhere he left friends that decades later he could show up on their doorstep and be welcomed in like family.

My father love of the sea was deep. And it has given drama to his adventures. Crossing the Atlantic he and his crew mates were de-masted and drifting in open seas with the lines wrapped around the prop. My father, chosen as the best swimmer, had to jump into the cold black sea to cut the lines free. He has sailed through storms and brought back the Cutty Sark to port in Venezuela when the rest of the crew went down to malaria. Even malaria was unable to stop him.

He met my mother when she was 16 in Nassau, Bahamas. He was 10 years her senior. But she was beautiful. He would play guitar and my mother would dance flamenco to the delight of the crowds in the bars. That is until my grandmother found out and dragged my mother by her hair home. She disapproved of my father. But you would have too. So my father flirted with my grandmother. It didn’t help, much. My mother was sent to England where she was a Playboy Bunny at the Playboy Club in London. My father told her to come to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. Come to the marina, ask for me, I’ll be there. And she did. And they were married.

With no money they moved to Hassel Island and made a home amongst the sudo-hippie colony and collection of misfits, oddballs and unique personalities. There he met one of two best friends he ever had. Dave Dana was a shipwright who taught my father the art of working with wood and designing and building ships. They build several ships including Tradition, a beautiful long wooden race boat with the first movable keel. When I was born he named me Dana in honor of his friend who had lost a son. I was brought home in a Heineken box which seems fitting considering who’s son I was. My parents raised me free and happy on Hassel Island. Next to us in the sail loft was the person he called his “German Brother.” Manfred Dittrich has been my father’s best friend for near to a half century. He considered him is true flesh and blood brother.

My father was an artist as well. I remember him making all kinds of oddities when I was a kid. When I was 10 he was hired to go to New England to rebuild a train so that it could be used as a restaurant. I remember being immensely proud when the back of the menu recognized him as a dying breed of artist. He created models out of wood, jewelry out of anything. Maybe you have some of those bright colored earrings. Today, my sister and I are both highly creative and work in innovation driven fields. We know where we get it from.

But these are the stories that so may of you know or even were a part of. What I know is what maybe you did not. I know a man who deeply felt for orphans. Maybe it is because he lost his father at 14 and had to become a father to his four sisters but the role of parent was important to him. He would make wooden toys at Christmas and send to the orphanage in St. Croix. My father was also one of the most well read men I have ever met. And he has an ability to figure out anything mathematical or how to build or fix anything. He was always willing to try something new. He was an artist as well. In painting, jewelry, wooden models and sculptures. My father was a creator by nature.

My father demanded much of me. To this day I still always open doors for women. I was taught that work is sacred and an honorable thing no matter what work it is. I remember walking down the dock at Yacht Haven and my father explaining that you treat every man the same no matter if he is the Captain of a one of the many mega ships on the dock or the guy who collects the garbage. For him, any man who worked deserved your respect. Any any man down on his luck deserved a hand up for which my father was always willing to give to those who needed it. From my father I also learned the importance of education. Not a wealth man he saved everything to send me the the best schools. He sacrificed for me because he believed in me. And because that is what a father does.

My father loved me and my sister. My sister was raised by her mother in California. It is my father’s one thing that he would have changed. He would have had both of his children together. But he told me once that I would never be alone because I had a sister. You see, my father knows the importance of family. He raised his sister and loved them immensely and was always happy to be with them, amongst family. In his final weeks he was with them. They ate crabs together. It’s kind of their thing.

If you are to feel sorry for anyone it is my mother. Though they separated when I was 6 they remained an un-separable partnership. They remained married, paid taxes together and supported each other. It was my mother who went with my father when he was diagnosed with cancer nearly two years ago and it was her that coordinated his care - calling hospitals, briefing doctors, paying bills and striking fear into anyone who do not get the job done the way she expected it. My father and mother have been together in their own way for over 52 years. My father has loved my mother every day since they met. And my mother has loved him back. My mother has lost her best friends. His last words were to her. He said that she and he were getting in the boat to go back to Hassel Island.

I will miss my father and, yes, I have cried. And I am sure I will again. But I do not morn. I do not regret. I do not wish it any other way. My father lived even when faced with death. He lived in spite of death. He lived a greater life that anyone I know. He collected friends over things and kept only a guitar and memories as his treasures. He was a family man who got to meet his two grandchildren, Sebastián 11 and Amelie 6. They adored him and he loved them and made them laugh. He lived like a viking - traveling, adventuring, daring, fearing not death. He was larger than life. And he was a great father.

I will always remember going to the beach with him when I was my son’s age. I will remember playing soccer with him, cold boat rides home and putting my head on his chest as we watched Magnum P.I. And when I hold my children’s hands in mine I will feel how he felt my hand in his all that time ago. And I know that torch is passed and that everything my father taught me, all the love he had for me, for my sister, is in me now and I pass forward to my children.

I imagine in death my father sailed out on to a beautiful ocean with a strong breeze, clouds bright orange and purple with the setting sun. He mans the wheel and looks forward, on to the adventure that is death and to whatever is on the other side. He looks back for a moment at all of us and waves and grins that grin full of life. I see it even now. Somewhere out there is my father with his guitar, a smile, a laugh, surrounded by his friends. They tell dirty jokes. they drink wine. Foolish old men who have lived lives worthy of storytelling. The Delfus Gang. The crew of the Betsy Virginia. the Morningstar beach crew.

So, do not be sorry for me. I am fine. I lived in the shadow of a great man and was loved by him. I am the lucky one. What I ask of you is this: Send me your memories of my father, write your stories, tell me the things that remind you of him. And share a joke with someone. That is something my father would have liked.

Unto the next adventure old man. Sail on. I will miss you. I love you. I honor you. Till we are together again. - your son, your baby boy, Dana.