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WILL MONTGOMERY

WILL was the oldest son in a family of three kids. He was born in May 1965 and his sister KAYE was born a couple of years later. His sister ELLEN was born a few years after that. WILL's mother was a fairly successful historical novelist (like Colleen McCullough) and his father was a circuit court judge. WILL grew up in Marin County, California (across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco and on the way to wine country) and had a relatively good childhood. His parents loved the kids but they were both very busy with their own careers. They treated the children with respect and provided them with good educations, manners and cultural experiences. His parents also provided a good example for their children by loving each other, enjoying each other's company and being active and interesting people.

WILL was intelligent and responsible with curly brown hair and gentle green eyes. He was tall and athletic and active in sports. He made friends easily but tended to spend most of his time with a few close friends. He would rather be alone than spend a great deal of time with uninteresting, unexceptional people. He went to private grade school and to a public magnate school for high school. His family went to the Episcopalian church but both parents were agnostics, who went to church because they wanted their children to have the opportunity to experience religion. In high school, WILL played football (wide receiver), basketball (forward) and baseball (center field). He was tall and muscular in a lanky sort of way. He did well in school and wasn't embarrassed to make good grades. Many girls were interested in dating WILL but he didn't take dating very seriously. He went to the dances, usually with girls who asked him to go and spent most of his time hanging out with his friends. During his sophomore year, he became interested in the smartest girl in the class, LEAH. She was tall and thin, wore glasses and no make-up but she was whip-smart and very confident in a quiet, self-contained sort of way. She played on the tennis team and ran cross-country and she didn't date. She was friendly with the other kids but didn't have any close friends. Her parents were university professors and she had just moved to school a couple weeks into their freshman year. After spending a month flirting with her, WILL finally asked LEAH to a winter formal dance and they were a couple throughout the rest of high school. During their senior year, LEAH began to come into her own physically and she was beautiful by the end of the year.

They both went to college at Stanford, where WILL majored in Political Science and Classical Studies. LEAH was a biology major and intended to go to medical school and become an obstetrician. Although WILL was not particularly interested in following his father's footsteps into law, he was interested in taking a variety of classes in college, such as Literature, Philosophy, Art History, Geology, etc. By declaring himself "Pre-Law," he was able to keep his parents happy and take a variety of humanities and other undergraduate courses. WILL and LEAH continued to date for the first year of college but then LEAH met and fell in love with a much older boy, a medical student. She thought that he understood her career ambitions better and that she was ready for an older, more mature boy. WILL was very hurt by the break-up because he had cared for a LEAH a great deal. He was very disappointed that they had grown apart. Without his steady girlfriend, WILL had much more time on his hands and he became very active in intramural sports. He was asked to pledge a fraternity during his sophomore year and agreed because he liked the guys in the fraternity and their intramural teams were very competitive. After his break-up from LEAH, WILL again did not put much effort into dating. He dated the girls who pursued him and went on dates that were set up by his fraternity brothers. He did not have any serious relationships during this time. His roommate and best friend in the frat was JAKE. During their senior year, JAKE's sister CHERIE was a freshman at Stanford. She was a friendly and fun girl and WILL adopted an older-brother attitude toward his friend's little sister. CHERIE spent a lot of time with the fraternity and at the end of the year, she fell in love with ROGER, another fraternity brother who WILL and JAKE don't particularly like but who they think is a decent guy. CHERIE became pregnant with ROGER's baby and he reacted very insensitively. He wanted her to have an abortion and she refused. CHERIE thought that ROGER was in love with her and she was devastated by his cruel reaction to her pregnancy and when he begins to date another girl (a girl with a reputation). He seemed to be flaunting the new girl just to hurt CHERIE's feelings. Eventually, WILL and JAKE found out about the situation and they convinced CHERIE that she and the baby would be better off without ROGER in their lives. They worked out an arrangement with ROGER's father, who has lots of money, to set up a trust for the baby in order to cover some of ROGER's responsibility and they helped her through the pregnancy and as she became a single mom.

After graduating, WILL spent a year in England, studying the Classics at Cambridge. He had traveled to Europe several times with his family while growing up but he really enjoyed the opportunity to experience the culture while living there for a year. He had an exciting affair while "on holiday" in Greece and casually dated a classmate at Cambridge. Their relationship was more about friendship than romance and they had an enjoyable time together without being devastated when the relationship ended and he returned to America.

After his year abroad, WILL still didn't know what he wanted to do for a career. He would have really like to keep on learning and he considered applying for graduate school in political science. His father really wanted him to go to law school and he arranged an internship with a law firm in San Francisco that specializes in cases related to civil liberties. WILL really enjoyed the experience and felt that defending civil liberties is a very worthwhile thing to do. He applied to law school and was accepted to New York University in New York City. WILL enjoyed law school and he liked living in New York. He fell in love with a poet, RACHEL, who works in a flower shop near his apartment. She has a "bohemian" style, is very open and free, has a good sense of humor about herself and is a very talented poet. WILL was crazy about her but she had had a painful romantic history and was unwilling/unready to get truly close to another man. She periodically pulled away from him and then got very close to him, back and forth. When he graduated from law school, WILL wanted to ask RACHEL to marry him and intended to get a job in New York so that they could start their life together there. RACHEL sensed that he was getting serious and she sabotaged the relationship by allowing WILL to catch her sleeping with another man. They argued and WILL, broken-hearted, returned to San Francisco, as far away from RACHEL as he can get. He went to work for the civil liberties law firm where he was an intern and gradually began to get over the relationship.

Back in San Francisco, WILL is a very eligible bachelor and many people try to set him up on dates. The wives of the partners in his law firm occasionally introduce him to women. His AUNT ELIZABETH, his mother's sister and the widow of a wealthy Sonoma Valley vineyard owner, often tries to pair him up with eligible women. His sisters also often introduce him to friends of theirs, in hopes that he will fall in love and settle down. WILL goes back to dating casually, without entering into any serious relationships. He keeps busy with sports and reading and attending the many cultural opportunities in San Francisco. He joins a softball league with some of his buddies from college and also plays racquetball on a regular basis with a partner in the law firm. His friend JAKE has moved to Washington D.C. but he continues to keep in touch with his sister, CHERIE, and provides a male role model for her son, BEN. Another fraternity brother, a couple of years older than WILL, PATRICK RYAN, decides to run for the House of Representatives and WILL becomes involved in his campaign.

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