Shane Montgomery funeral to be held Friday

Roxborough native Shane Montgomery will be laid to rest Friday morning, just shy of a week after a volunteer dive team discovered the 21-year-old in the Schuylkill River. 

A funeral mass is scheduled for 10 a.m. at St. John the Baptist in Manayunk. The towering Rector Street church is his family’s parish and served as ground zero for a series of neighbor-organized searches after Montgomery disappeared.

Rev. John Kelly expects every one of the church’s roughly 700 seats to be filled, even by those who didn’t know Montgomery or his family.

“It’s every parent’s nightmare so it speaks to the core of our humanity in many ways,” said Kelly.

Roxborough resident Marie Thorpe, who will be among Friday’s attendees, said the family’s deep community roots will also bring people out.

“A lot of people loved Shane. A lot of people loved his family. A lot of people really respect the family and want to pay their respects,” said Thorpe, Montgomery’s boss at The Pierogi Kitchen in between semesters.

Montgomery went missing around 2 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day after drinking with friends at Kildare’s Irish Pub in Manayunk.

The exhaustive, five-week search that ensued yielded little forensic evidence for investigators.

Just after noon on Saturday, though, a diver with the Garden State Underwater Recovery Unit found Montgomery eight feet from the riverbank behind the Manayunk Brewery on Main Street, walking distance from where the young man was last seen alive.

The Montgomery family is holding viewings today from 5 to 9 p.m. and Friday at 9 a.m. at St. John the Baptist Church in Manayunk.

The family is requesting any donations in Shane Montgomery’s name be made to the Garden State Underwater Recovery Unit or to Friends of St. John the Baptist.