• Amby's Myspace.


• Be somebody, or be somebody's fool.

• Simon - Amby the Dare Devil: The Roller Cart


• Rose - Glass of Water


• Alaina - I think of Ambrose every time I hear this song.


• Alaina - Funny drunk Amby


• Rose - The Out House Observance

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 Simon at 11:14pm on Monday the 24th of March, 2008

Maybe six years ago or so, Amby and I were at Sam Baker's house, who lived with her parents.  I don't remember where Sam was, but she was indisposed for some reason.  While we were waiting for her, we found a little square cart with four plastic wheels in her parent's garage.  It was the kind of roller cart that mechanics lay down on, belly up, so they can get in and out from under a car easily while they're working on it.  It was really tiny, maybe two feet by two feet, and pretty rickety-looking.

Amby had the bright idea to get a rope and tie it to the back of my car and pull it.  He figured Sam's stepfather wouldn't mind if we borrowed it for some good clean fun.  I had Amby go first while I drove the car.  He told me to take it slow at first and he'd signal to go faster.  So I got in the car and went for a spin around Sam's very suburban neighborhood, dragging Amby behind me.  We had given the rope to much slack and so the subtlest turns I would make were sending Amby veering off in wide sharp angles, smacking against the curbs.  Keep in mind there were no handles to grab a hold of, no mechanism to slow down with on this cart--the person on the roller cart was at the total mercy of the driver of the car.  I was pulling Amby at about 15 miles per hour and the knot we tied came undone.  The cart went spinning wildly like a hyperactive carousel and the cart flipped.  Amby ate it.  His knees got scrapped up and the palms of his hands were shredded.  When I ran back to check and see if he was okay he was laughing.  "Your turn," he said.

After seeing his spill I made sure he kept it safe and practically thrill-less for me.  I wouldn't let him go past ten miles an hour and I made him keep it straight.  After my uneventful run, Amby said he wanted to go on the cart one more time.  After his wreck I would have figured he wouldn't have wanted to do in again, but Amby was never known to be a pansy.  This time he had me go fast.  Every time I thought I was driving way too fast for this stunt to end without Amby getting pulverized, he would signal for me to go faster.  I got up to 40 miles per hour.  It might not sound fast, but on that little cart 40 miles per hour might as well have been 100 because the tiniest pebble would have sabotaged the whole operation and left Amby horribly mangled.  Thankfully, it ended safely.

After this second run of Amby's we noticed that the plastic wheels on the cart had melted, practically down to nubs.  We hid the cart back in Sam's stepfather's garage and decided it was better not to tell him we destroyed it.

The moral is: little brother Amby was much more daring than I ever was.  A pansy, he most certainly was not.

Posted by Rose at 6:37pm on Monday the 24th of March, 2008

In Annapolis, me 17, Julie 10, Ambrose 12. 

Julie and I shared a bedroom, and we were arguing over who would get up and get two glasses of water because we were getting ready for sleep but we were thirsy.  So, being the lazy people we were (her not anymore, me more then ever), we decided to just randomly yell family names to come to us.  "Now who would actually get us a glass of water after they come into our bedroom and hear that we don't have a solid problem?"  We called Simon, my dad, then Ambrose.

"I'm a comin'" was his exact phrase when we called his name.  Julie and I cracked up laughing.  Then he actually, in his happy way, brought us two glasses of water. 

Little memories like that are crystallized because I can't make any more with him. 

Posted by Alaina at 8:41pm on Sunday the 23rd of March, 2008
This song came on the radio (strange in this day and age) while I was driving to CA to see Rose. It makes me think about Amby, and his ability to go against the grain no matter how he was trained by society to be "normal'. I guess in some way I understand what he was feeling to do what he did, but none of us can ever really understand, no matter how much we think we do. Anyway, I stole bits of pieces of the song Father and Son. How can I try to explain? When I do, he turns away again. It's always been the same, same old story. From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen..........All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside-- It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it. If they were right I'd agree, but it's THEM you know..not me. Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away. I know I have to go. -Cat Stevens

Posted by Alaina at 8:30pm on Sunday the 23rd of March, 2008
 A looooong time ago, when half the Breen's were living in that apartment on Churn Creek, I for some reason decided it would be a good idea to take Amby out and have a few drinks. Keep in mind that he was only about 15 at this point.. If I remember correctly, he had already had a few and just wanted to get out of the house for a while and make mischief. Well, he had a few more and a few more.. and on the way back home, he was sprawled across the back seat of my car half passed out/half asleep on Julie's lap. Poor sweet Julie.. trying to help her drunken brother take a nap on the way home. Well, to thank her, suddenly Amby threw up ALL over her and the back seat/floor of my car. After the prerequisite ewwwws and grosses, and the windows being cracked to let out the stench, Amby woke up and looked around as if to see what all the fuss was about. When I pointed out to him that he just puked all over the back of my car AND his little sister, he laughed that evil laugh of his and started scooping up.. well, you know.. and eating it. When we told him the next day what he'd done, I'm pretty sure he denied it all.

Posted by Rose at 10:50pm on Saturday the 22nd of March, 2008

Now I was saving this story because it's more weird, and reveals some oddities in our family, but here goes.

Our Uncle Tom is an eccentric man.  Never pays his taxes (has a "Death to Taxes" sign posted on his front door), constantly has an unlit cigar in his mouth, and lives in a barn with an outhouse as his bathroom.  He also has a topsoil buisness with tons of fun things for kids to hide behind and climb on for a good game of freeze tag.

As a side note, whenever anyone would come to visit my brothers or me, Uncle Tom would immediately tell to, "check out the mountain of manure I have!"  We hide him sometimes from public interactions.

Anyway, Ambrose was an agile, fun loving, hyperactive game organizing wippersnapper when we lived in Maryland as children.  Ambrose would organize freeze tag games often, just as I hear he organized parties later in his life.

We had a full family member participation game of freeze tag one day that went terrible wrong.

While my step sister and I were locked in an outhouse (because people who were tagged went to jail...the outhouse....until their party freed them) Ambrose slipped and fell from the top of Uncle Tom's very tall dump truck.  I still remember him slipping like a frog and landing on his back.  All of this was observed from that little moon window that is in every outhouse.

So with us trapped inside we and screaming to be let out to help him, my brother Tim came to the rescue.  He (being overprotective) naturally assumed Amby broke his back, so he ran home and made a make-shift paramedics cot for Ambrose.  He fell hard.

My Aunt Irene also called 911 (she's a worrier as well) and we all waited to see if he was okay. Of course he was; only Ambrose could pull through a fall like that and bounce back.

What I'm getting at is that he was a very resilient man.  He was organizing the same freeze tag games in no time. 

He was always the first one to do the most darning thing:  like one of my Aunt Grace's 30 feet high rope swings (which sometimes broke on us).  He could hold the swing in front of him, jump, grab a tree over 50 foot ditch, and let go of the swing to slide down the tree.  He was fearless with things like that- all for the sake of fun.

Time is passing and I'm getting better everyday-hopefully we all are- but I never want to forget him.