While family memorial services will be private for the man lovingly known as Captain Herb Emory, his wife wants metro Atlantans to know she feels their love.
Emory was an authority on Atlanta area traffic woes and had worked at AM750 and 95.5FM News/Talk WSB and Channel 2 Action News since 1991.
“My heart is full knowing that Herb had such an impact on so many people’s lives,” said a tearful Karen Emory in a phone interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I just ask that everyone pray, to give me and my family the strength to be the kind of person Herb was.”
The family of Herbert Lee Emory, 61, of Douglasville, will receive friends and visitors from 3 p.m. until 5 p.m. and from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. Tuesday at the at Jones-Wynn Funeral Home, Douglasville, which is in charge of cremation arrangements.
Karen Emory said there will be a public memorial service and celebration of her husband’s life, hosted by their WSB family, at a later date.
“I cannot express how many wonderful friends and family have been here to support me,” she said. Emory said “the outpouring of genuine love and compassion” she’s received from the WSB family has left her near speechless.
Emory said her husband died Saturday after assisting a young motorist whose car wrecked not far from their home.
“We were in the yard doing some work, and we heard the crash,” she said. “He started down the street towards it with his cellphone, calling 911.”
Once on the scene, Herb Emory seemed to instinctively know what to do, Manuel McFarland, the father of the teenage driver, told Channel 2 Action News. McFarland said his two sons were in the car, and Emory calmed one while attending to the other.
Karen Emory could not contain her emotion after hearing what McFarland said about her husband’s last moments. She said her husband collapsed at the scene of the wreck, while directing traffic. He was later pronounced dead from a massive heart attack.
“He was the most caring, giving individual,” Emory said of her husband of 24 years. “He was totally selfless. Herb made me a better person, and I think he had that effect on anyone that spent any time around him.”
In addition to his wife, Emory is also survived by his mother Joyce Sanders Emory of Pisgah Forest, N.C.
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