This column is about funerals and about a couple of friends named Monte.
On Friday, Feb. 22, the community of Lander laid to rest its mayor, Monte Richardson.
Monte, 69, was a big bear of a guy and he just loved his home town. He died unexpectedly following a surgical procedure.
Monte’s Huge Funeral
Perhaps the largest funeral in recent memory occurred at the Lander Community Center as all his friends gathered to say good-bye.
I wrote up a piece that I felt summed up my feelings about this good guy: Monte Richardson personified two great ideals: the Golden Rule and the American Dream.
Our late mayor was a good friend. He was a friend to everybody.
He lived the Golden Rule where you treat others like you would like to be treated. He spent most of his working career as a janitor and yet he was way more than a custodian. He was an institution in the schools where he worked.
He was a familiar friendly face to all those thousands of school kids he greeted during his time at elementary schools. You can bet that if a little kid was having a bad day, Monte was there to cheer him or her up.
No wonder he was elected to the city council and mayor so easily – all those kids grew up and voted for him!
Monte may have lived a humble life but he had big-time aspirations. He loved his town of Lander and wanted to get involved.
Prior to his political life, he and his wife Debbie always helped with various projects that benefited the town.
Eventually he was elected to the city council and then elected twice to be mayor. This was truly the American Dream, where just about anyone can accomplish what they aspire to.
Monte’s dream was leading Lander and helping it get better. He may have worked himself to death doing it.
In his earlier janitor life, he lived the life personified by the slogan that “no man ever stood taller as when he bent over to help a child.”
And his love for Lander, well, could anybody love our little town more than Monte? Every town deserves to have a Monte Richardson.
In the end his heart gave out. It seems it wasn’t strong enough for all the love he had to give.
Monte Paddleford’s Dream
My second story occurs during another funeral in Lander and is about another man named Monte. This one is also tragic but features a unique twist.
Andrea Foster, 49, was a woman in her prime who died of colon cancer while being treated in Arizona. She was a Lander native, the daughter of Monte and Bev Paddleford.
The Paddleford’s are well known as founders and owners of the Eagle Bronze Foundry, which creates massive bronze monuments utilized around the world.
At her funeral back in October of last year, her father shared a dream he had about her and a revelation contained in that dream.
Andrea and her husband Ben, a well-known artist, had three children. The couple had also lost a little boy some years earlier, who is buried in the Lander cemetery.
In the dream, Monte saw his daughter Andrea sitting under a big tree in green grass. There was the bluest sky and a bright sun. A nice little creek was flowing nearby. She was very happy with a big smile on her face. She was cradling three little ones, a boy, and two girls.
Although this scene made Monte very happy, he was confused. Who were these two little girls?
When he told his family about his dream, Andrea’s daughter Hannah shared that her mom had had two miscarriages and both times, she just knew they were little girls. She even named them.
Monte is an engineer and very analytical but said the detail in the dream was enough to convince him that his daughter was in good hands in heaven.
And In Conclusion . . .
Normally, I write about politics or wonderful places to go visit in Wyoming. But this time around, I really wanted to share with our readers these two stories. Thanks for reading.
Correction – In last week’s column I wrote about The Sisters, a huge series of valleys on Interstate 80 south of Kemmerer. I misplaced them in that column by saying they were somewhere else.
Attribution – Also in last week’s column about terrible accidents on Interstate 80, I neglected to give credit to John Waggener, author of the book Snow Chi Minh Trail and Doug McGee of WYDOT, both of whom, gave me helpful information for that column.
