Whether or not you are in law enforcement, you have likely seen this famous painting by American illustrator Norman Rockwell.
What we did not know – and we’ll bet you didn’t, either – is that Rockwell used an actual police officer to pose for the painting. We learned this today when our friends at POLICE magazine passed along the news that the Massachusetts trooper depicted had died this past Sunday at the age of 83.
According to a report in the Boston Globe, Richard Clemens was a 29-year-old trooper when Rockwell, his neighbor in Stockbridge, asked him to pose for the painting. The illustration appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1958.
The Massachusetts trooper is depicted sitting at a diner with a young boy in Rockwell's iconic painting, "The Runaway."
From the Boston Globe we learn that the boy, too, is an actual person, named Ed Locke, and that he and Trooper Clemens because friends as a result of their association with Rockwell.
All these years, and we thought it was simply an illustration.
Below is a photo of Trooper Clemens and the painting taken in 2001.
