SOMERVILLE SAYS FAREWELL
Cop’s family, friends celebrate his life
Longtime Somerville police officer Louis Remigio spent his every waking minute trying to better the city he served and the town he lived in, his heartbroken family said yesterday at a packed funeral Mass.
“He never stopped unless it was to give a helping hand,” one of his daughters, Danielle Remigio, said. “He wasn’t very good at just sitting. Let’s be honest, if he was sitting he’d be sleeping. He used every ounce of energy he had serving the community around him. I never saw someone care about people as much as he did.”
Remigio, 55, was a decorated 30-year veteran of the Somerville Police Department, having received a life saving award, a meritorious service award and a beyond the call of duty award.
He was struck and killed Sunday morning while riding his motorcycle on Interstate 95 in North Hampton, N.H.
His daughter recalled how he’d carry stuffed animals in his cruiser to give to traumatized kids and often joked that their mother, who died from a sudden illness last year, was the smart one.
“Anytime I had a problem that he didn’t know the answer to, he’d say, ‘That’s why I’m an officer and not a detective,’ ” she said.
In the days after the crash, Remigio’s family said the community returned the officer’s kindness in dozens of small ways.
From the Vermont state trooper who escorted Remigio’s Canadian relatives to his hospital bedside, to the police officers who took money out of their own wallets to pay for hotel rooms for them, to the restaurant that delivered meals to the hospital.
His cousin Dan Remigio said it was because of these kindnesses that the officer’s loved ones were able to be there for him in his final moments.
“There’s nothing that makes you feel more human and more vulnerable, or to reorient your moral compass, than to sit in a room and watch a loved one labor to take their last breaths,” he said. “It was an agonizing 10 minutes for us. But we stood there and we held him and we told him it was OK and that we loved him.”