Montie Montana Rides Off Into the Rose Parade Sunset

The phone at the Agua Dulce ranch of Marilee and Montie Montana hasn’t stopped ringing since last Monday.

“People are calling to see if I’m sick or something,” says Montana, the 84-year-old former movie cowboy whose trick roping and smile made him a familiar face to Rose Bowl parade watchers.

It seems that when you’re 84, some people may be thinking the “or something” means you are now saddling up with the ghost riders in the sky.

The calls began after Bob Eubanks--who was supplying Rose Bowl parade commentary on Channel 5--happened to mention that 1995 was the first parade Montana had missed in more than 30 years. Eubanks said Montana was missed, but didn’t say anything about why Montana was among the missing.

Concerned, Montana’s friends started heading for the phone.

“I told everyone last year that 1994 would be my last parade,” says Montana. “I figured 30 parades was plenty for anyone.”

He says he decided that instead of getting up before dawn and trying to stay warm as he smiled and roped his way down Colorado Boulevard, he would watch the parade in front of his fireplace with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. Which he did.

If the phone calls mean that Montana has a faithful following, it is not because he was a major movie star in the way that many of his contemporaries in the ‘30s and ‘40s were. But his ability to rope both man and beast got him into the flicks in the golden age of the oaters, where he rubbed shoulders--on and off screen--with the likes of Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, John Wayne, Tom Mix, James Stewart and Leo Carrillo.

He says his most memorable roping was not on screen but during the 1953 inaugural parade of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

“I was riding past the reviewing stand and I shouted out to Ike asking him if I could rope him. He said I could and I did,” Montana says, still relishing the moment. But, he adds, Secret Service people later told him that if they had not heard him ask the President’s permission, Montana would have come out of the experience looking like a sieve.

Montana was one of a group of riders that included Clark Gable and Ronald Reagan who began riding around the San Fernando Valley when it was still mostly farmland. Later, many members of the group conducted annual rides through Santa Barbara County.

Montana came to Southern California as a young man from Wolf Point, Mont., population 5,000. In 1929 he joined the Buck Jones Wild West Co. before becoming a movie cowboy. He says he was told that if he couldn’t sing, he should get a fast horse and some fancy clothes.

That’s what he did.

Although his movie days are over and he probably won’t ride in another Rose Parade, he still makes appearances doing trick roping at rodeos. He plans to be at the Pendleton rodeo in Oregon this summer.

One proviso to Montana’s statement that he would never ride in the Rose Parade again: “What I meant to say is that I won’t be riding horseback, but if they want to draft me as marshal, I’d show up.”

Shooting Brings Continued Anguish to Family

On Monday morning, Aug. 16, 1993, Doug Bundy--a 41-year-old Palmdale telephone repairman--was working in a manhole when a tragedy struck that continues to devastate his and his family’s life.

Someone walked up to the manhole, pointed a gun down the work space and almost blasted the top of Bundy’s head off. No one has been able to put together the shooter’s identity or why Bundy became the victim of this violent act.

At the time of the shooting the Palmdale community, telephone company officials and Bundy’s co-workers, as well as friends and relatives, were stunned.

As word got out, letters of sympathy and support started pouring into the Bundy home.

By Christmas, 1993, Bundy was allowed to come home from the hospital for a few days to enjoy time with his family.

By then he had undergone roughly 20 of the 40 operations he would have to repair injuries to his skull, eyes and brain.

The keynote of that holiday was hope.

“The doctors had given Doug a 5% chance of physical recovery when he was first taken into the Antelope Valley Hospital,” says his wife, Chris. “By that Christmas we were all so thankful that his progress had been so good.”

The family’s spirits were buoyed by the goodness of friends and strangers who continued writing letters, sending money and organizing fund-raisers to show their concern.

That was then.

This year the Bundys went to their cabin in the mountains for the holidays. Snow fell, so the family woke up to a white Christmas. Bundy seemed to have recovered physically from his injuries. There were gifts for everyone.

The picture-perfect scene was misleading, however, for a number of reasons--including the fact that Bundy’s assailant is still unknown. The support that boosted the family’s spirits has, with time, dwindled. Bundy is having a hard time getting on with his life.

“The children and I want him to rejoice in the fact that he has his life back, but that isn’t happening. Something keeps him from having an interest in doing anything,” says Chris.

In addition to trying to support her husband, Chris is raising their three children and works at a local school as an office support person. She says her husband has lost his social and parenting skills and that the bustle of having teen-age children around makes him anxious and angry.

He has moved nearby to his parents’ home.

The family is in therapy to help understand what is happening to Doug and how to cope with the way it affects them.

What he is going through is not unusual, doctors and therapists have told Chris. No one knows if his disorientation, confusion and anger will go away with time.

“We are all trying to do the best we can, but it is hard on all of us,” Chris says, the strain evident in her voice. “Sometimes Doug talks about getting a divorce, but I tell him I am not ready to give up on him.”

While the family struggles to cope with what has happened, they wonder why the still-anonymous villain pulled the trigger in the early morning of that warm August day.

Overheard:

“Home, home on the range. Where the deer and the cantaloupe play. . . .”

--Three-year-old Studio City cowboy singing his version of the old standard.