David Christopher Montgomery, age 81, died peacefully on July 19, 2021 at the Wentworth of Coventry Retirement Community in Salt Lake City, Utah. David was born in Chicago to James Marcus and Eleanor Young Montgomery January 16, 1940, and grew up in the Franklin Park suburb of Chicago. He earned a bachelor's degree in history from Brigham Young University in 1961. During his time at BYU he met and married Lynda Crane. Following college, he joined the US Army and enrolled at the Army Language School in Monterey, California where he graduated first in his class in Russian. Following his military service he attended graduate school at Indiana University, where he earned a Ph.D. in History, with an emphasis on Central Asian history and languages. During graduate school he, along with his wife and young son spent one year in Ankara, Turkey on a Fulbright research grant. He also traveled solo to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, then part of the Soviet Union, in 1969-1970 for six months to study Uzbek language and culture. Following graduate school, David returned to BYU as a faculty member in 1970 where he taught World, Ancient Near Eastern, and Central Asian History and Altaic languages. He published scholarly articles on Uzbek poetry and contributed to the development of an Uzbek-English dictionary. He participated in BYU's month-long summer desert survival course in 1974, enjoying it so much that he returned as an instructor the following summer. His love for Utah's deserts and mountains remained with him his entire life. David and Lynda divorced in 1975. He met Jeanne Emmett Morrison at BYU; they were married in 1976. He returned to Uzbekistan for six months again in 1977-1978, this time bringing his wife with him. Among his memorable BYU experiences were traveling to Israel and Egypt as a faculty advisor with BYU's Young Ambassadors performing group and giving a forum lecture in the Marriott Center on his Uzbek poetry research. He retired from BYU in 2002. He is remembered by many former BYU students as a caring mentor who was willing to help with problems inside and outside the classroom. David had a lifelong interest in aviation history. His faculty office at BYU was distinctive for its colorful Turkish rugs and about 100 model airplanes suspended from the ceiling. Starting as a teenage hobbyist and continuing through the end of his professional career he collected thousands of three-view aircraft plans, eventually filling 182 large binders, which are now part of the collection of the Seattle Museum of Flight and one of their most used reference resources for historians and designers. In 2007, he was invited to attend a celebration of the Turkish Air Force's 100th anniversary, where he gave a lecture and received an award for his scholarly contributions to the history of Turkish aviation. He served in many callings in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including Cub Scout and Scout leader, Sunday School teacher and counselor in a BYU singles ward bishopric. David lived in Orem for 50 years and treasured the view of the mountains from his home. He is remembered by friends and neighbors for his kindness and interest in others and by his family as a loving and devoted father, grandfather and husband. A memorial service will be held at noon, Saturday, July 31, at the Sharon Stake Center, 545 South 800 East, Orem. A meeting and greeting period will be held from 11:00 am to noon. David was preceded in death by his wife Jeanne, who passed away in November 2018 and by half-siblings Frederick Daw and Constance Congour. He is survived by sons Christopher, Steven, Eli, Emmett, Carl, Jesse and Erik, brothers Clinton, John and Martin, sisters Victoria Larkins, Priscilla Rogers and Catherine Senesac, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.