Thomas M. Montgomery died in Chico, California on March 17, 2019, at the age of 100.

Tom was born in Bakersfield, CA on May 25, 1918, to the late Thomas M. Montgomery, Sr. , and Beulah Potts Montgomery. His family left Bakersfield when Tom was an infant. Tom’s youth was spent in Imperial Valley, a ranching area. At an early age, Tom learned to ride a horse (after being thrown a few times) and to explore the desert; and he witnessed much of the early development that took place in Southern California.

Tom attended high school in Pasadena, then went on to Stanford, where he obtained a degree in history.

Tom served in the U. S. Army. Three years of that time were spent in the Southwest Pacific Theatre, including Australia, New Guinea, and Leyte in the Philippines. Prior to the war, on December 5, 1941, his artillery unit sailed for Manila. They were one-third of the way to Hawaii when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Their unarmed ship was ordered back to San Francisco. In March 1942, after a rail trip across the country, his unit sailed from New York on a 40-day voyage to Melbourne, Australia, as part of the 41st Division. Tom always considered himself very lucky not to have started for Manila two or three weeks earlier than he did, because he might then have been part of the Bataan death march.

After the war, Tom completed his legal education and obtained a law degree from Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. While there, in 1947, he met and married Doris Davidson, who has been his companion and partner ever since.

After practicing law in Marin and Placer Counties, Tom came to Humboldt County as a deputy district attorney in 1955. This brought to an end the diagonal migration from the desert in the southeast corner of the state to the fog-shrouded redwood area of the North Coast. One of Tom’s duties was to advise the Board of Supervisors, which had been without legal counsel for a number of years. In 1956, the Supervisors set up the office of County Counsel and appointed Tom to fill it. Tom remained in that position until 1968, when he was appointed to the Superior Court.

In 1956, the county had no CAO, no personnel department, no building department, no department of public works, and virtually no zoning. It fell upon Tom to handle a lot of administrative matters along with the legal ones; and his office represented all of the school districts. Tom had a large hand in the formation of the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District and College of the Redwoods, and he made two appearances in Washington regarding the establishment of Redwood National Park.

As County Counsel, Tom appointed the first woman to be employed by the county as an attorney.

At the time of his appointment to the bench, Tom was the first vice president of the District Attorneys’ Association of California and was scheduled to become the next president.

Tom served on the Superior Court from 1968 until 1982. He handled all kinds of cases and part of the time was Presiding Judge. He also sat on assignment in a number of other Northern California counties.

Tom enjoyed traveling to far-away places, and he continued to do so at an advanced age. But he was always glad to return to Humboldt County and his home in Trinidad. He loved the out-of-doors. In his younger years, he and Doris back-packed in the Trinity Alps, and they hiked the Milford Track in New Zealand. When he was young, Tom spent many happy days salmon fishing with the late Dr. Herman Iverson. Tom enjoyed reading and keeping up with current events, and his late parents instilled in him a love of classical music and the value of learning and education. Through the Montgomery Scholarship Fund, which they established and endowed, Tom and Doris have been supportive of needy and deserving students at Humboldt State University.

Tom made it clear that he wanted no funeral or service of any kind — that Humboldt County has been kind to him, and he just wants to fade away.

Surviving Tom are Doris, his wife of 71 years; his son Tom of Spokane, Washington; his daughter Jane and her husband Richard Spini of Arcata; grandchildren Jaimie Blanton, David and Melanie Montgomery, and Anne and Maggie Spini. Tom was predeceased by his son Stephen and his two sisters, Helen Shafer and Beulah (Tip) Hobbs. Tom often pointed out the unusual stretch of generations in his family — that his maternal grandfather was a Union soldier in the Civil War.

Tom once suggested that anybody who knew him might simply want to lift a glass in his memory.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Tom Montgomery’s family. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here.