Richard Clemens was born in New York City and spent much of his career as a Massachusetts state trooper. Rockwell, who was Clemens’ neighbor, asked the trooper to pose for the 1958 painting with an 8-year-old boy. It shows an officer counseling a young boy who wants to leave home, and was featured on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. It’s a well known painting in the law enforcement community, and can often be found in police stations across the country.
Before moving to Massachusetts, Clemens was a police officer in Arlington from July 1952 through August 1953. Records show his address as having been in the Long Branch Creek neighborhood.