Star Of

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 "homeless 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.