Law enforcement officers and first responders line the streets of
Sommerville offering a salute to Matthew Tarentino at his funeral.
Members of the Newark Mounted Unit stand at attention as the funer-
al procession to the cemetery leaves The Church of the Immaculate
Conception.
Weck has spent considerable time contemplating the reason
for this one and trying to find words to fully measure what Tar-
entino meant to thousands who attended the wake and/or the
funeral, his department, two communities and his profession.
He has offered his own tributes and listened to those that have
come from as high up as the attorney general’s office.
“There’s a lot of stuff out there, but at the end of the day, it’s
not going to do him justice,” Weck concludes. “We will never
capture everything that Matt meant to the department, our
community and his community.”
The story of Officer Matthew Tarentino probably begins with
his grandfather, Sydney Spiegel, a dedicated and decorated
New Jersey State Police lieutenant. In 1944, Spiegel became
known as the man who saved D-Day.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower hand-picked U.S. Army
Ranger Spiegel to be his personal bodyguard. In the spring of
1944, Spiegel accompanied Eisenhower to a meeting in En-
gland where the planning for what would become the Battle
of Normandy occurred. A courier who was supposed to deliver
top-secret films showing the French coastline where the D-Day
invasion would take place arrived up with a hole in his satchel
and no films.
Eisenhower commanded Spiegel to “find those films.” So he
jumped on a motorcycle and scoured the English countryside.
To cut to the chase, he found a group of children playing with
the films and traded them a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum to
get back the intel. In his book, Crusade in Europe, Eisenhower
wrote about Spiegel: “His personal loyalty and anxiety to pro-
tect and assist me knew no bounds.”
Amerman saw the impact Spiegel had on the family and
notes that much of what Matt accomplished had to do with
his grandfather, particularly his respect for the uniform. Proc-
tor described what he got from his grandfather by calling Matt,
“The most loyal guy you have ever met.” Franks explains that
Matt’s loyalty manifested into a superpower that would have
made him jump in front of a bus for a kid, and old lady or a dog
running across the street, without hesitation.
“He was a big, strong kid with an even bigger heart,” Franks
admires. “His grandfather was the same way.”
When the PokémonGo craze hit a few years ago, Officer Tar-
entino filmed a public service announcement to promote safe-
ty amongst those out there trying to catch ‘ em all. He loved do-
ing read-alongs at Summit’s elementary schools and teaching
driver’s education students what can result from drunk or dis-
tracted driving. He was noted for setting up obstacle courses,
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