By Mandy St. Amand
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Copyright 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
WATERLOO, Mo. — Plastic storage containers filled with jeans and T-shirts and sweat shirts fill part of the basement of the home in Waterloo that Earl and Diane Chambers moved into earlier this year.
Someday, maybe weeks but more likely months or even years from now, they will open the containers and sort through the things that belonged to the youngest of their three children. First came Denise. Four years passed before Chris arrived, and five years later came the baby: Jeremy Preston Chambers.
When Diane Chambers told her mother the name she and her husband gave their youngest child, her mother said he would grow up to be very important. “She was right,” Diane Chambers said last week, one year and three days after her son was killed in the line of duty as an officer with the Cahokia Police Department.
Chambers was 26, a three-year veteran of the force, driving his patrol car on Illinois Route 3 when another driver crossed into Chambers’ lane and struck him head-on last April 24. The driver of that car, William E. Anderson of St. Louis, was charged with reckless homicide and aggravated DUI. Police said his blood-alcohol level was 0.15, nearly twice the legal limit.
In the days and weeks after their son was killed, the Chambers heard from friends and strangers alike anxious to share stories of what their son had meant to them. They learned that after one shift, he had returned to a home where he had answered a call and fixed a woman’s broken furnace.
“We never heard about these things until after he died,” said Earl Chambers, who retired from the Cahokia Police Department in 2001 after 27 years. As a lifelong officer, he felt his doubts when his youngest son told him he wanted to become a police officer. Jeremy Chambers already was a volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician. He hurried to New York to help in the rescue effort after the terrorist attacks. He knew, he told his parents, that he was meant to be a police officer.
The parents and spouses of cops deal with the knowledge that their son or daughter, husband or wife, chose a dangerous profession. Diane Chambers had a husband on the force, and both sons followed in his footsteps. Chris Chambers is an officer with the St. Louis County Police Department. She worried, yes, but knew she could not spend every moment thinking about her husband and sons.
Every night that Jeremy Chambers worked a late shift in Cahokia, he would try to ease his mother’s fears. His dad went to bed early, but he knew his mother was a night owl. Between 10:30 and 11 p.m., her phone would ring. Jeremy was checking in. They would speak for a few minutes, and Diane Chambers would rest easier for the remainder of the night.
Her ritual changed after Jeremy was killed. Now every night she logs on to the website her nephew maintains, . Sometimes she posts her own message to Jeremy. Sometimes her husband does. They are little notes like “Happy Easter” or “We miss you and love you.” Some postings can bring tears to the eyes of strangers. Two weeks before the anniversary of Jeremy’s death, his mother wrote, “I found that picture of you with peanut butter and jelly all over your face and how you would put half the sandwich in your dresser for later.”
In the year since they lost their son, the Chamberses have soldiered on. They filed his taxes. They rented out the house in Cahokia he had just finished remodeling. The tenant is a firefighter and friend of Jeremy’s who was going to move in and share expenses.
On Thursday, they will travel to Springfield for the annual Illinois Police Memorial ceremony. Eight names will be added to the memorial for the eight officers killed in the line of duty last year. Later this month, the Chamberses will head to Washington for National Police Week. The names of 382 law enforcement officers - including Jeremy Chambers - will be added to a memorial there.
They know the Washington events will be difficult. They’ve been warned by the families of Nicholas Sloan and Ralph Tatoian and Scott Armstrong. Sloan was a St. Louis police officer; Armstrong was a Bridgeton police officer; Tatoian was a Missouri state trooper. All three were killed in the line of duty. Close as the families have grown, they certainly would rather be strangers than friends bound by loss.