Copyright 2006 The Denver Post
All Rights Reserved
By JOHN INGOLD, CHRISTOPHER OSHER and ALICIA CALDWELL
The Denver Post
The wall of firefighters stretched a city block long.
There were 1,000 of them Thursday morning on Colfax Avenue, standing in arrow-straight rows 10 deep. They wore dress blue uniforms and a slash of black tape across their badges.
An assistant fire chief yelled out, “Uniformed personnel! Ten-hut!” and each firefighter snapped rigid, like a piece of machinery clicking into place. Slowly, an antique white fire engine draped in black rolled to a stop between the wall of blue and the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.
Inside the truck was the body of Lt. Richard Patrick Montoya.
Montoya, 61, was a Denver Fire Department veteran who died Sunday from injuries he suffered helping to rescue a 16-year-old girl from a north Denver house fire.
On Thursday, thousands of family members, friends, strangers and fellow firefighters gave Montoya a hero’s send-off.
“We are very proud of him,” said Archbishop Charles Chaput, who presided over the Mass.
Catholic ceremony mingled with Fire Department pageantry. There were occasional jokes and scattered laughter, but every action had an order to it, from the march-step of the Fire Department honor guard to the delicate wrist-flicks of Chaput as he sprinkled holy water over Montoya’s casket.
This was a ceremony in which mourners took their responsibilities seriously, as if to live up to what Fire Chief Larry Trujillo said during his eulogy.
“Show me a man’s family,” Trujillo said, “and I’ll tell you about the man.”
Near the end of Mass, Eric Carrasco, Montoya’s son, walked to the lectern, passing his father’s firefighting equipment, organized as if still ready for action — coat and helmet hanging; boots upright and fitted inside the legs of the pants.
An unstoppable force
Carrasco, who is also a firefighter, wore his dress blues.
“When he did anything, he did it with 100 percent effort or he didn’t do it at all,” Carrasco said. “He didn’t stop until he was completely satisfied with the finished product. That’s the kind of father he was.”
There were many things Montoya didn’t have to do, Carrasco said. Just 15 shifts shy of retirement, he didn’t have to race into the burning home on May 14.
Nor did he have to raise Carrasco and his sister as his own children after marrying their mother when they were young.
He didn’t have to help expand his daughter’s house when she was pregnant with her second child. He didn’t have to wake up early every morning to make his grandchildren French toast or pancakes or make sure he was home when they got out of school in the afternoon.
But, of course, he did all of those things.
“We say our dad is special and our dad is a hero,” Carrasco said, “because he’s a brother, he’s a husband and he’s a grandfather. But most of all, it’s because he’s our dad. We love you, Dad, and we will miss you very much.”
Chief Trujillo said he imagined Montoya’s final week, when he was on life support at the hospital, as an argument with God. Montoya loved to argue.
On the seventh day, Trujillo said he imagined, Montoya agreed to go.
“Rich, you got your ticket,” Trujillo said. “You take care of things up there, and we’ll take care of things down here.”
When the Mass concluded, the pallbearers took Montoya’s casket back to the antique white fire engine, which then led a procession north past Montoya’s fire house, Station No. 9, then south to Fort Logan National Cemetery. Firefighters and spectators again lined Colfax as the engine rolled forward, followed by more than 150 other fire engines and emergency vehicles from across the state.
“The hands of God”
At Station No. 9, more than 40 Denver police cadets and officers stood at attention as the funeral procession went by. So, too, did JoAnne Kelly, a retired waitress who lives four blocks from the station.
Kelly said she has had heart problems a few times and firefighters from Station No. 9 kept her calm until paramedics arrived. “I’ve always said and I will always say they are the hands of God,” Kelly said.
At Fort Logan, Montoya’s wife, Louise, clutched the hands of her daughter, Marti, as the mourners recited the Lord’s Prayer. Two sailors folded the flag that had been draped across former Seabee Montoya’s casket. Louise began to cry as Trujillo pinned Montoya’s fire badge on one corner of the flag.
Twenty-one doves were released into the sky to commemorate Montoya’s time as a Navy Seabee. The doves’ handler, Tom Lux, gave Louise Montoya the last dove, symbolizing her husband’s spirit.
“He will be there on the other side to greet you and to say ‘Welcome home,”’ said Lux.
Louise stroked the dove gently. Then she released her grip and let it go. As she raised a tissue to blot her tears, she watched the dove circle around and around, higher and higher, into the impossibly blue sky.