By TOM HILL
Los Alamos

I would like to thank David Cremer for his recent Op/Ed (Shared Grief) on his wife’s caring for a former LAPD officer who had dealt with his Dad’s death long ago. It was spoken from the heart and has a lot of important points worth pondering. It is worth everyone taking the time to read and thinking about.

Charlie Cremer was the group leader of secondary design in the early ‘70’s, which included the design of the W76. I was just a recent hire into T-1, worked on the same floor, and we’d pass each other in the hall once or twice a day. He always had this very friendly greeting and a smile that wouldn’t stop and I was quite taken by Charlie, it always brought a warm feeling to my heart, even though I barely knew him. After several days of these passings, he started to greet me by my first name. Wow … this important group leader took the trouble to learn my name … probably by walking by my office and noting the name tag on the door. That was an important lesson that I took to heart.

One day, I heard a buzz of conversation out in the hallway and left my office to find out what was up. “Charlie Cremer took his life by suicide today”. I was blindsided by that news and returned to my office and sat there for an hour, tears running down my face. I couldn’t understand why such a personable guy would do this. I knew he had a young son (David) that I knew must be devastated by that news and always wondered about that impact.

So now I know the rest of the story. Thank you so much for sharing that, David. What you say about our police officers and first responders is a very important message. Our LAPD is absolutely the very best.