MY MONTANA, BY ORLANDO SANCHEZ PHOTOS COURTESY OF ORLANDO SANCHEZ
verybody has a story, with different threads and experiences and family and places we have called home. How Montana became this huge chapter in my life is the story I want to share. In the early eighties, I returned to my hometown of Houston, Texas, after finishing my U.S. Air Force experience. There I met a friend whose family was from the Quad Cities on the Iowa side of the Big Muddy. My friend’s father, a WWII Navy veteran, had just sold his interest in a business he owned and moved right outside of Missoula, Montana. One day, my friend asked, “Would you like to come visit my dad in Montana?” I agreed, and off we went. What I didn’t know was that was the beginning of a long love affair with the West, the Rockies, nature, good down to earth people and the great state of Montana. It was a yearning in me waiting to be discovered.
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Having been born in Havana, Cuba to parents of Spanish descent, my infant years were tumultuous. The Castro forces had just over-run the Cuban government, my parents fled the island and sought refuge in Caracas, Venezuela. My father was a sportscaster, focusing mostly on baseball. In the early sixties, Houston, Texas, a fledgling Texas Gulf Coast city, was in search of a professional baseball franchise. It succeeded in landing one when Major League Baseball awarded Houston its first baseball franchise, The Colt 45s. From the outset, the team’s management wanted to broadcast the games in Spanish and hired my father. In May of 1962 I arrived in Houston, from Caracas. In 1962, Houston was on the verge of crossing over the one million mark in population, today the Houston metropolitan area is home to more than 7 million people. Density is increasing, wide open prairie land has been paved, wetlands are no longer, and gridlock is the prevailing order of the day.
