Interviewer(s): R. Carriker. Lafayette, LA

Affiliation: University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Mr. Roy Montgomery was born in 1920 in Lafayette, Louisiana. His father died when he was four years old. He attended Lafayette High School and then went to the University of Southwestern Louisiana from 1940 until 1941. In 1941, when his brother went into the service, he took his place as a rod man for City Service Oil Company. By 1942 he had been promoted to driller and volunteered for the Army Air Corps to serve in World War Two. When he returned from Europe in 1945, he went to work for Lane-Wells Perforating Company, where he started out cleaning and loading perforating equipment and moved up to helper and truck driver. In 1949, he went to work for Spartan, which was almost immediately bought out by its competitor Halliburton, which fired him. He came back to Lafayette, looking for a job and hoping to get out of the oil industry. After taking care of his invalid mother for awhile, he went to work for Citcon in Lake Charles. He retired in 1985 or 1986.