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                                                                                PROFILE, Page 62

Star of His Own Sad Comedy


Born into a comfortable middle-class existence, RICHARD KREIMER
wound up homeless and defiant. Is he a victim -- or simply
vindictive?

By DAVID ELLIS


    Like many men in his condition, he has few tangible
items: a well-worn sleeping sack, a garbage bag full of clothes,
and some notes scrawled on grubby pieces of paper. But unlike
those of most street people, the notes in Richard Kreimer's
hands are not limited to the addresses of sympathetic friends
and the opening hours of the local soup kitchen. There are some
telling initials -- G,S,D, -- next to the phone numbers on
those sheets. Geraldo. Sally. Donahue.

    From a pay phone in Morristown, N.J., Kreimer keeps in
contact with the producers who toil for the giants of television
talk in a campaign to bring his message to the electronic
masses. He is a homeless man with a story to tell, complete with
a high-concept synopsis: He Took On a Town Without Pity and Won.

    To triumph over one's enemies is one of life's deepest
satisfactions, and Kreimer has been blessed with the feeling.
Thanks to a barrage of legal actions against suburban Morristown
(pop. 16,500), Kreimer received a $150,000 out-of-court
settlement last week. More money may be on its way. Usually
sporting long black hair and scruffy beard, Kreimer resembles
Rasputin -- and Morristown has discovered that he's just as
difficult to dismiss.

    "Just a few months ago, I was a poor, unassuming homeless
person," he says. "But now that I've become an individual who
will stand up for his rights, some don't want to see me
succeed." The path to success, he believes, may include pit
stops at this year's Democratic Convention as a "home less
delegate," a billboard public-service campaign featuring
Kreimer, a national lecture tour and a feature film. "I plan on
being the homeless Ralph Nader."

    Patrolling the streets in a greasy blue windbreaker,
Kreimer adopts the manner of a small-city mayor. His staccato
pronouncements, delivered in a North Jersey accent, arrive in
sound-bite size. "Homelessness," he barks, "isn't an epidemic
-- it's a pandemic." As he holds court at a local coffee shop,
relating the tale of how he won a two-year police-harassment
case, he keeps an eye on the sports page as he speaks. "Hey,
Georgia Tech beat Colorado State." Some of his resentful
neighbors will tell you that Kreimer is a publicity-mad hustler,
a man who has gotten over on the town because he combines the
ego of a rock star with the vindictiveness of a Mafia don.

    For most of his 42 years, Kreimer was one of the "status
people," a catchall phrase he uses to describe middle-class
workaday folks. He grew up in a prosperous household, the son
of Victor and Katy Kreimer, a prominent local couple. But even
as a kid, friends recall, he was kind of "dopey," a bit
rebellious and unmotivated in school.

    Victor died in 1967, and Richard stayed home to look after
his mother. When she died in 1973, he inherited their
four-bedroom house as part of the estimated $340,000 estate,
which he split with elder brother Kenneth. Left on his own,
Kreimer dabbled in landscaping and worked on a horse farm.

    Somewhere along the line, former friends say, he embraced
failure. In 1980, after an inheritance quarrel, Kreimer
abandoned the house and moved to Denver. During that time, he
would often make late-night phone calls to people back in New
Jersey asking for emergency loans to return home. According to
Joel Beecher, a family friend, people in the community wired
hundreds of dollars; none of the money brought him home, and the
loans were never repaid. Although Kreimer sold the house in 1981
for $61,000, he was broke upon arriving back in Morristown three
years later. Bills and "family difficulties," he claims,
absorbed his funds. Others counter that they attempted to help
Richard get his life together and set up job interviews. He
rebuffed them and started living on the streets.

    In his new incarnation as a drifter, Kreimer became
something of a local fixture. High school friends would invite
him into their homes for a shower and shave. When it was too
frigid to spend the night in the fields near a new condominium
development, he would take the train to Manhattan and ride the
cold out on the subway.

    Through it all, he stayed clear of drugs and alcohol. But
he refused to enter the local Market Street Mission program
because of its "religious element," and he shunned the
alternative of a shelter. Having rejected the middle-class
ethic, Kreimer was equally unwilling to adopt the deferential
mien expected of a street person.

    "A homeless person like me isn't going to go to a
shelter," he says. "They're dehumanizing and don't allow you
control over your own destiny. And then there's the problem of
a disorderly environment." His daytime hours were spent at the
local library, reading the papers and gossiping.

    It was around 1987 when the people of Morristown got sick
of Kreimer. Perhaps it was his too familiar presence outside
the Municipal Building, or his insistent and knowing manner in
all things local. Moreover, he was no longer an oddity:
Morristown's homeless population had swelled from a handful to
more than 300. The town police began rousting street people from
the parks and doorways. Most accepted the move-along policy.
Kreimer didn't.

    After a growing cadre of homeless people began to disrupt
the quiet confines of the library, some librarians quit in
protest. They said they were sick of being hassled by street
people, and Kreimer in particular. So the governing board
adopted a code of conduct that barred people with "offensive"
bodily hygiene and banned staring at other patrons.

    In an irony not lost on the town, Kreimer began using some
of the legal knowledge he picked up in the library stacks.
Working as his own lawyer, he filed a civil rights suit alleging
a pattern of police harassment.

    Along the way, he received support from unlikely quarters.
One sympathetic policeman helped him type the first legal
filing. He was given court-appointed lawyers; and a former town
councilwoman, Marge Brady, offered advice and support. "The
thing that set Richard off against the town was the fact that
they didn't take him seriously when he threatened to sue," she
says. "That really inspired him."

    At first Morristown brushed off Kreimer's demand for an
apology and a minor cash settlement, convinced that the matter
would die quietly. Instead, it grew to farcical proportions; 11
lawyers were soon involved in defending the town from Kreimer's
legal assault, and its legal bills soared past $250,000.
Ominously for Morristown, Kreimer began scoring other legal
victories: last April the New Jersey attorney general allowed
Kreimer's petition to list "the streets of the fourth ward of
Morristown" as a voting address. The following month, Federal
Judge H. Lee Sarokin struck down the library's rules of conduct
as arbitrary and in violation of Kreimer's First Amendment
rights. "If we wish to shield our eyes and noses from the
homeless, we should revoke their conditions, not their library
cards," Sarokin wrote.

    Suddenly, Morristown was faced with the prospect of a
legal donnybrook that would cost more than $1 million. "We knew
that some of the cops stood to lose their homes to pay damages
if we lost in court," says Kathleen O'Neill Margiotta, then
town council president. Last November the municipality threw in
the towel and settled for $150,000.

    For the past few months Kreimer has patiently waited for
the money. Paying a $3.25 bill at a local store, he withdraws
a crisp $20 note from a brand-new wallet. The billfold, he
says, is "from an admirer." He may soon need a second wallet.
Kreimer's lawyer is negotiating another cash settlement,
stemming from the separate First Amendment suit now under
appeal.

    Speaking in the third person, Kreimer brags about his
legal victories and how he has been asked to create a
homeless-outreach program. "We want to provide street people
like Richard Kreimer with a storefront drop-in center that's
free of bureaucracy," he says. "Let's face it. Most of the
current system is set up to perpetuate itself. It doesn't work."
The American Library Association dedicated part of its winter
meeting to a seminar on patron conduct. "That's inspired by the
Richard Kreimer case," says Richard Kreimer.

    It is up to others to suffer the downside of his success.
At the public library on a frigid winter day, another street
person huddles in the foyer, leaning against a heater. Face to
the wall, he mutters to himself as his stench fills the air.
The librarians and patrons pass by on their way into the
building -- there could be legal consequences to disturbing him.

    At times a flash of something like fear crosses Kreimer's
face when he is asked about living on his own again. He will
donate some of the settlement money, but certainly not all of
it, to the homeless cause. "I've been inundated by requests from
people who want a loan," he says. "But hey -- I can't be a
banker to every person on the street with a problem." He will,
however, continue to be a self-appointed homeless advocate.
"This is not over yet," he says. "No way is it over yet."

    In order to remember how to live the "status" life,
Kreimer says he will seek something called "life-style
rehabilitation counseling." Sounds plausible. Slipping
comfortably back into the community he has never really embraced
will be difficult. Problem is, the counseling exists only in
Kreimer's head, somewhere in the middle of his ever growing "to
do" list.