Paul Letalien knew Herb Emory just well enough to lunch with him occasionally in the company of mutual friends. Or the two would chat when Letalien dropped off a donation at one of many charities Emory supported.
But just a few days after the Letaliens’ son died in 2013, there was “Capt. Herb” on the phone, saying, “Buddy, we’ve got to talk.”
And talk they did, either on the phone or over a meal, just about every week for the next 15 months. In those talks, Emory — whose own son had passed away a few years earlier — told the grieving parents the things no one else could or would.
“You’re not going to get over it,” the veteran WSB traffic reporter counseled them bluntly.
When Letalien’s wife, Cathy, confided that, even after months, she would go into their son Jeremy’s room, sit on the floor and cry, Emory understood.
He talked openly, too, of the guilt of surviving one’s child.
In the Letaliens’ case, that guilt was compounded by the fact that their son, a graduate of Kennesaw State, had fallen prey to an addiction to opiates.
For them, the truths Emory spoke, however stark, brought their own solace.
“Not a lot of people get it,” said Letalien, president of Archer Restoration Services in Acworth. Pastors and well-meaning friends tend to offer uplifting words of comfort and encouragement.
“They have no idea of the pain,” he said.
Or, as Emory told him: “You and I are in a club nobody wants to belong to. We’ve got to support each other.”
Through the months, he was amazed, over and over, at just how unwavering Emory’s support could be.
Despite Emory’s hectic schedule and multitude of commitments, Letalien never called his cell phone without getting through to him.
“I’ve never heard your voicemail,” he told Capt. Herb one day.
That was the case even if he called when Emory — whose traffic reports Letalien didn’t follow — was on the air.
“He’d say, ‘We have to go on a break now,’” Letalien recalled, “and he’d pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, Paul, what’s up?’”
Over time, Emory encouraged the Letaliens to share their story with others, however much that might go against their instincts.
“My son was a great kid, a smart kid,” Letalien said. The shock of his death upended the father’s world.
“I told Herb I really just wanted to drop out of society,” he said. But Emory urged him to think of others who were fighting the same enemy — and too often losing. “Herb told me, ‘You’ve got to let your situation be known.’”
Today, he speaks to middle and high school students and their parents about the insidious spread of opiates among young people of every social and economic class.
“Because Capt. Herb reached out to Cathy and me, we have a network of about half a dozen parents who also have lost sons and daughters in various ways.” Letalien said.
The Letaliens have also established a scholarship in their son’s name at Kennesaw State and plan to endow another in Capt. Herb’s name.
In the outpouring of remembrances that followed Emory’s death Monday, most people spoke of his sunny disposition and his roguish humor.
But, even before fate dealt Letalien the blow that made them so close, he saw something different in Capt. Herb.
“He always had a smile,” he said, “but I could see the sadness in his eyes. I knew what he had gone through, and I wondered how he carried on.”
Emory told him that he had never been able to drive on the road he was on when he received the news of his son’s passing. “He said, ‘I never drove on that road again.’”
But somewhere in their months of shared heartache, that changed, and Emory confided that he had been able to use that road during his commute again.
“Helping you to get through this has helped me to get through this,” Capt. Herb told him.
Now, with Emory’s passing, Letalien finds himself once again in the very pit of grief.
“I’m devastated,” he said.
One of the last times they spoke, Emory wanted Letalien to come by his home to look at some windows that needed replacing.
“I told him it was too cold to do the work, let’s wait till it warms up, and I’ll come by, check out the windows and we can get some dinner,” Letalien said.
“He knew we were getting into our busy season with remodeling so the last words he said before we hung up were, ‘Don’t forget about me.’ I never will.”
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