• Amby's Myspace.


• Be somebody, or be somebody's fool.

• Kevin - good ol' Enterprise high school...


• Simon - Forest Fire


• Andrew - Just hanging out.


• Simon - The Ultimate Schemer: Amby on the Lam


• Rose - Ambrose and the U.S Government

This is a place to collect stories and pictures, to share experiences, and remember Amby. Please direct any memories or images for posting to ethan.sletteland@gmail.com

Posted by Kevin at 2:25am on Thursday the 13th of March, 2008

So pretty much whenever I think of or hear about about amby this image/scene has always been conjured in my head of way back when we were just wee ladds and went to the same aweful highschool enterprise...

So I remember knowing amy and I think rose a little and the regular riffraff more or less, and I was going to enterprise and hating it soo much and then I saw this little red headed kid who always wore this big tie-died shirt around. and it must not have been a day or two later he walked into the aprtment amy(i think?) used to live in right near the school on churncreek.

Its fuzzy and the details vary but I remeber being at the apt. with zach or someone and then amby came in and I was like hey I saw you at school and he was out of breath, and i was like did you run here or something? And amby was said, "yeah, gasp, I uh kinda have to run home or I get fucked with..." and I was appalled and tried to ask who it was and he just seemed like running wasn't too big of a thing, and I swear after that I'd see him running home time and again for a while the second the bell rang. 

And I remember pretty much after that encounter the only other time I saw him was when he was chillen' in the apt playing nothing else but 007, and recall many occasion when he schooled me at that game and he was really into hooting and hallarin' on about it which was fun to just watch everone play when he was around.

So that was pretty much the last time I really even hung out with amby when his voice was all high and squeeky and he was always talking in a way that made it seem he was tryin' to be high pitched and kinda funny sounding. But I realized after a while that was just him his voice jumping high and very into whatever he was saying. And this is the image I still have of him and the essence of sincereness and uniqeness. And I always looked up to him a lot because he was able to go to school and deal with all that bullshit  by just being the way he was which i don't know how else to say but was just amby.

Posted by Simon at 2:21am on Thursday the 13th of March, 2008

One day, when we were kids in Maryland--I was around 12 or 13 and Amby 10 or 11--we received a gift of Black Cat firecrackers from our Uncle Tom.  These were illegal in Maryland but he had smuggled them back from Texas for us.  Black Cats are the kind of firecrackers with a lightning-fast fuse and a not-too-powerful explosion.  Being the geniuses that kids can sometimes be, we decided to take these firecrackers and some matches into the woods with our friend Matt Roach and have a firecracker war.

We headed to a spot downhill from the family log cabin and decided that was a good place to try and blow each other up.  We each took cover and commenced the assault.  Firecrackers were flying and popping and we were having a great time.  I held onto a firecracker for too long and it exploded in my hand, turning my thumbnail black.  It didn't feel too good.  I ran down to a nearby stream to try and wash off the residue it'd left on my hand.  Meanwhile, the warfare was still on between Amby and Matt.  While I was gone, Amby got a brilliant idea.  Instead of having to go through the whole two-second hassle of lighting a match every time he wanted to setoff a firecracker, why not build a fire from a small pile of leaves so that there was a constant open flame?  This way he could attain rapid-fire fuse ignition.  He lit the pile and--WHOOSH--the fire spread like bad news.  By the time I got back from the stream (I'd only been gone a couple of minutes) it was a full-fledged forest fire.  We tried stomping it out but that didn't really work.  So we run up the hill to the log cabin, grabbed some five-gallon buckets, filled them with water, and ran back down to try and douse the flames.  We repeated this a few times, but every time we made it back from where the log cabin was to where the fire was, the conflagration had grown exponentially.

Finally admitting to ourselves that we weren't going to be able to sweep this one under the table, we sent Amby running to Uncle Tom for help.  Amby tried telling Uncle Tom what happened, but Uncle Tom's reply--not fully appreciating the magnitude of the situation--was, "You boys need to take care of your own problems."

Well, when the helicopters and fire trucks starting showing up we figured that was our cue to run away.  Turns out, a neighbor half a mile away had called the fire department after they were seeing gigantic ashes flying around their yard.

Once the fire department was there on the scene we figured, "Glad that's over with," went home, and played some baseball in our front yard.  When our dad caught wind of what had happened he wasn't too pleased.  He put the kibosh on our ball game and when the arson investigator came poking around, our dad--rightfully so--was quick to throw us under the bus.

And that is the story of how Amby burned down three acres of forest, got us interrogated for arson, and had us placed on a three-year probation before he'd even hit puberty.

Posted by Andrew at 1:00am on Thursday the 13th of March, 2008

My favorite and best memories of Ambrose were just hanging out with him one on one.  I know a lot of people have party stories with him and I have plenty of those too, but seeing Ambrose at a party was just such a surface part of him.  Just spending good quality time hanging out with him outweighs that party persona he had to an outstanding degree.

The best part about him was how lively and how influential he was to me.  He really broke me out of the social shell that I had.  I would just be too nervous to meet new people, too shy to build up new friendships, but he made me realize that that's just a silly way of existing.

Hanging out in the hot tub, taking turns playing Final Fantasy, cracking up over shows like "Next" on mtv, or just doing rutinuely boring things like shopping or mowing the lawn were always made infinitely more enjoyable when Amby was around.  His views on society and just people as a whole were refreshing, and I wish everyone could have a little bit of the mind set that he had.

I just miss him a lot, but I'm glad I was able to have a person that's made such an impact in my life.  The Breens as a whole are all pretty great, and without Simon or Amby I'd be a much different person.

After the memorial in Redding, I woke up pretty early to clean my mom's house up a little bit since she was generous enough to let me use it.  After cleaning the house I had such a huge feeling of emptyness and sadness.  After talking with my mom about it I realized the reason why was because it was the first time I'd ever cleaned that house without Amby's help.  It was always him and I cleaning after a party, or when he lived with my mom and I, it was always him helping me mow the lawn or cleaning the hot tub.  I guess when you do something for so long with someone, it's pretty crazy when it's different, that's when I guess you realize the full impact of a person's absense.

With that being said though, I believe there are more worlds than this one, and death is just another door to another room.

Amby will be missed, his impact felt by thousands of people, and will be rememberd as one of my best friends.

Posted by Simon at 12:29am on Thursday the 13th of March, 2008

After having had enough of orders, protocol, and morons, Amby decided to go AWOL from the Coast Guard.  He couched hopped for a while trying to avoid staying in one place for too long in fear that the military police (the MP) might be hot on his trail.  Amby would occasionally call them and leave messages like, "You'll never catch me," just for kicks and giggles.

One day I received a call from a detective in his pursuit.  The detective told me that he feared Amby may have murdered his wife (Amby had a sham marriage to Ami--but that's a story best told by her).  They jumped to this conclusion simply because they hadn't been able to get a hold of her by phone.  When I told Amby about this we split our guts laughing at this overzealous detective's ridiculously erroneous fears.  Still, this concern that the MP had meant that they were going to step up the search for him, and he had to take that seriously.

He schemed up an ingenious plan--to drive his car all the way down to Mexico and lay low until the heat was off, "maybe buy a house there and never even come back."  So he made the ten-hour drive all the way there, just like he said he'd do.  Only, he didn't stay quite as long as he'd planned.  He got there, stayed one night and turned right back around.  He was back in Redding the next day.  I asked him what happened to his plan and his answer was, "Nobody told me that people can't speak English in Mexico."

This is one of countless examples of Amby's absolutely absurd/wonderful hair-brained schemes.  Anyone who really knew him knew about his endlessly scheming ways.  For him, it was never really about the scheme coming to fruition.  His love was for the scheming itself and it never actually mattered if the scheme was realized or even attempted sometimes.  Death was just one more scheme for him and it's to all of our great sorrow that it was one scheme he couldn't turn around and go back on once he went through with it.

Posted by Rose at 10:57pm on Wednesday the 12th of March, 2008

First off, this is an angry message, so if it does not fit with what is positive, delete it.

I was reading a blog that Andrew wrote about Ambrose giving up his bed for someone, buying him food, etc, and it triggered a memory about what Ambrose would tell me about his experiences with his roommates while in the Coast Guard.

Ambrose was no idiot.  He had and still and always will have a good heart, brain, and rare beautiful core of what is right and wrong.  He hated the idea of the "Kill Bots".

Anyway, he had two dumb jocks as roommates- those types who want to die for their country and have no idea why.  Lemings.  One of the caught on to how 'unpatriotic' Amby was towards the military.  I believe the line Amby said he would always say to him was, "Boy, you better salute that flag!".  Ambrose would laugh in his sarcastic way, knowing he was dealing with morons. 

Amby told me that these two roommates would fill his bed with ice cubes to be mean.  Things like that.  And I, of course, would get so angry I wanted to kill them.  But Amby would shrug it off saying, "Who cares what they think?  They are not really hurting me." 

Eventually one of these idiots ratted Amby out for a fake marriage to my best friend.  But the military, being morons, could not prove the marriage was all to gain more money.  So this upper division military man put Amby in a chair, circling him for an hour, yelling at how smart he thought he was and how 'unpatriotic' it was to do what he did.  They could not get him in trouble, so all they could do was yell.

I wonder, because of Amby's blase' reaction to things like ice being put under his sheets every night, just how often stuff like this happened to him for him to NOT be outraged at that lower class, cruel treatment.  

Wipe your ass with the flag as toliet paper for all I care.  When Amby tried to reason with them it was always might over right.  It's thugs like thoses that I am most angry with when I think of why Ambrose is not here anymore.  I see Ambrose somewhere at peace laughing at how ridiculous the world has become.  Like I said, he escaped.  In a strange way I know I will never have to worry about these people and their little minds, small world ideals, and petty lives affecting my brother.  But I'm sure he wondered why people like that exisited without actually thinking. 

Also I found lots of pictures of Ambrose today.  Pictures of him with my mother at the beach.  Listening to music.  Sleeping like an angel.  Pictures of him at 7 years old, laughing with curly blond hair.  These are the images of him filled with life. 

Tomorrow I'll scan them and put them on this site, where good people who loved him can see him in all his goodness.   That is what I want crystylized in the hearts of his friends:  his zest for life.  And I love the man even more for stepping out of the bounds of a fucked up structure, like the military.