Ex-Glendale fire captain who beat cancer honored at D-backs’ spring training game
GOODYEAR, AZ (AZFamily) — A former Glendale fire captain who beat cancer took the field to be honored at a spring training game on Saturday afternoon.
Ex-Glendale Deputy Fire Captain Chuck Montgomery ran the bases in the third inning at Goodyear Ballpark during the Arizona Diamondbacks-Cincinnati Reds game. It was part of the Home Run For Life celebration. By Montgomery’s side was Dr. Amber Flaherty, one of his oncologists at City of Hope Arizona.
“It’s an incredible honor to be recognized and also to be doing it alongside with my wonderful doctor [Flaherty]. She was 100% responsible for me being here today. She’s a great doctor. She has incredible compassion and just a real admiration for the patients that she treats,” Montgomery said before the game.
“I am a procrastinator, so I’ve literally not touched a ball, and it probably won’t go badly, but that’s okay. Hopefully, my family still loves me and I don’t embarrass everybody, but I’m just there to have fun and support Chuck. So I’ll do the best I can,” Dr. Flaherty chuckled.
Montgomery says firefighters have much more equipment to protect themselves today than when he began in the early 80s, but he urges fellow firefighters to get regular checkups.
“I had about a baseball-sized tumor up in my right, armpit area, and it wasn’t impossible for me to ignore. So, I got lucky, but it’s not always that obvious. Sometimes those masses and tumors can be hidden in places in your abdomen and other places,” Montgomery explained. “I also had one on my left hip that was totally undetectable to me. So those two together, being that they were right and left of my center line and above and below my waist, put me at stage three.”
Arizona’s Family was with Montgomery last summer in a heartwarming twist of fate. The former firefighter reunited with a nurse he had helped save nearly three decades earlier.
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