By: Megan Roche

Anne Butler Montgomery remembers her time at Livingston High School with fondness. 

“Livingston was a fabulous place to grow up,” Montgomery shared. “We had so many opportunities there. I thought growing up that everyone had New York City, that everyone had Broadway, that everyone had the Museum of Natural History. We were very spoiled growing up. Livingston High School also had all kinds of wonderful programs.”

The LHS Class of 1973 alum had a successful career in sportscasting, but has reinvented herself many times. It was because of her experience as a member of the Broadcast Crew at Livingston High School that she knew sportscasting was what she wanted to do.

“We had the broadcast crew every morning which meant we were responsible for doing the morning announcements. Six of us kids did the announcements and we ran it like a radio station. One day, I went in and I grabbed all the sports stories and one of the guys said ‘what are you doing?’ and I said ‘I want to read the sports.’ and he said ‘you can’t, you’re a girl,” 

On that morning, Montgomery read the sports and immediately found her niche. Through her years on the Broadcast Crew, she was affectionately known as Big Anne. 

“During those years, that’s when I realized that being a sportscaster was really cool. I was used to public speaking because I was in theater and I loved sports, especially hockey. Back then, there weren’t any female sportscasters and the closest thing was Phyllis George,” Montgomery said with a laugh.

Recalling her sportscasting memories, one of her biggest career moves was anchoring ESPN’s Sports Center as one of the first female anchors of the long running show. There were many moments while she was there that she remembers fondly; most of them being the kindness that athletes showed her.

“Most of the moments that stick out in my brain are the nice things that people and athletes did for me. Back then, that was difficult because they weren’t used to me being around and wandering into the locker room. I’ve always been grateful to the good guys who did all they could to help me,” Montgomery shared. 

With a love for sports in general, it should come as no surprise that Montgomery also served as a referee for a number of years. It was only a few years ago that she hung up her officiating gear for good.

While sports will always be a love, so will writing. Despite being dyslexic, Montgomery has served up many books. Her first book, A Light in the Desert, is a fictional account of the 1995 sabotage of a passenger train in Hyder, Arizona. 

“I’m an avid newspaper reader so when I started writing books, it was always about issues or problems of some kind. As I wrote, I’d weave stories through those issues that I’d read about in the newspaper,” Montgomery shared. 

Since A Light in the Desert, Montgomery has also published The Magician, Wild Horses on the Salt, and The Scent of Rain. In September, she’ll add The Castle to her list. 

A synopsis of The Castle: “Maggie, a National Park Ranger of Native American descent, is back at The Castle—a six-hundred-year-old pueblo carved into a limestone cliff in Arizona’s Verde Valley. Maggie, who suffers from depression, has been through several traumas: the gang rape she suffered while in the Coast Guard, the sudden death of her ten-year-old son, and a suicide attempt. One evening, she chases a young Native American boy through the park and gasps as he climbs the face of The Castle cliff and disappears into the pueblo. When searchers find no child, Maggie’s friends believe she’s suffering from depression-induced hallucinations. Maggie has several men in her life. The baker, newcomer Jim Casey, who always greets her with a warm smile and pink boxes filled with sweet delicacies. Brett Collins, a scuba diver who is doing scientific studies in Montezuma Well, a dangerous cylindrical depression that houses strange creatures found nowhere else on Earth. Dave, an amiable waiter with whom she’s had a one-night stand, and her new boss Glen. One of these men is a serial rapist and Maggie is his next target. In a thrilling and terrifying denouement, Maggie faces her rapist and conquers her worst fears once and for all.”

When it comes down to it, Montgomery does everything she does in life with passion. When it comes to writing, she shared the following anecdote.

“You have to find someone (an agent) who believes in you, but you also have to understand that having a best seller is like hitting the lottery,”

Montgomery’s books are available on Amazon.com. For more information about her, visit www.annemontgomerywriter.com.