Ben Lepper ’25
Editor-In-Chief
For this installment of the Centennial Alumni Report, I had the honor of talking with Bud Montgomery ’57, a former Spire Sports Editor and an Editor of The Purple.
Born and raised in Wisconsin, Bud found his way over to Holy Cross from Marquette High. He was an editor of the Marquette Flambeau, the school newspaper, and also was editor of the yearbook of his eighth grade class at St. Robert School in Milwaukee. Getting involved with journalism at Holy Cross was, therefore, very much in the cards for him.
Prior to becoming a Sports Editor, he held the title of Assistant Managing Editor, but really hit his stride once he became part of the Sports section, and focused his reporting on the basketball team. “You’d think of Holy Cross in the same terms that you’d now think of Duke, or Kansas, or North Carolina,” he said of the program at the time. “I tended to follow them around New England. They played some home games at the Worcester Auditorium, and the Boston Garden was our home court for three or four games. It was a lot of fun, specifically when I was a junior; we really had a good team and won the NIT that year, which really was on par with the NCAA.”
Montgomery also reflected on a specific encounter he had with a few of the school’s more famous basketball alumni at the now-defunct Field House. “A few of us were playing pickup,” he said, “and we took them on for all of five minutes. They beat the bejeebers out of us.” “They,” of course, were Bob Cousy and Tom Heinsohn. “I did get to know Tommy Heinsohn a bit,” he said, “because he was a year ahead of me. As a sports editor, the one thing we did that we were very proud of was that we managed to scoop the Worcester Telegram on the day that Heinsohn was named All-American. The Crusader came out about four hours before the Telegram.”
Bud was also a part of the decision to change the name of the paper from The Tomahawk. “I was involved, although mine was a lesser vote,” he said. “I was probably a freshman, maybe a sophomore. The thought was that The Tomahawk didn’t mean much to the school, whereas The Crusader did. Once somebody suggested it, it was not a difficult decision. To this day, I don’t know why we were The Tomahawk.”
After his graduation, Bud went to the now-defunct Marquette Medical School and edited the Marquette Medical Review his senior year, and then focused the rest of his life on being a pediatrician with a speciality in adolescent medicine. He also mentioned that being a pre-medical student made him ineligible to become the Editor-In-Chief of the paper, and that Laurence O’Donnell, his close friend who ended up as the paper’s Chief, went on to become the Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal. “The experience he got grinding out The Crusader really helped him there.”
Writing for The Crusader looked a bit different than writing for The Spire. In Bud’s time, every student had a 10:30 PM curfew, but those who wrote for the paper were allowed out later to finish it up. Exporting to our printer these days involves a simple email and file transfer; back then, someone had to drive out into Worcester to typeface. Bud attended the school before it was co-ed, and mentioned that even mothers and sisters were not allowed in the dorms.
But, it was made clear in our conversation that one thing transcends generations: no matter who you are, or what you want to do with your life, getting involved with student journalism is a great way to set yourself up for the rest of your life. Whether you’re looking to become a pediatrician like Bud or a full-time journalist, learning how to write and communicate, two core values of journalism, will pay dividends. Not only that, but it’s been over sixty years since Bud’s time with the paper, and he still has fond memories of his involvement. The fact that we have been able to nurture this opportunity to grow and create core memories for a century now is proof that The Spire, or whatever you want to call it, is far more than just a simple school newspaper.
Thank you for your time, Bud. It was an honor chatting with you.
Featured image courtesy of College of the Holy Cross
Copy Edited by Caroline Kramer ‘26
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