Chances are, Lt. Laurel Hester never planned to make headlines. Long before she became nationally known as a dying gay woman who wanted to leave her pension benefits to her partner, Laurel Hester was a cop. A good cop.
COURTESY OF LIEUTENANT FILMS INC. Lt. Laurel Hester and longtime partner Stacie Andree share a few quiet moments together shortly before Hester’s death in January 2006. And that is also her legacy.
“She loved being a cop,” said Richard Chinery, her former boss in the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office. “She was so good at it. She was a great marksman. She outshot us all, which we didn’t like.”
“She would not back down,” said Dane B. Wells, her first police partner in the Prosecutor’s Office.
He recalled one incident when he was working undercover, attempting to sell heroin to a convicted murderer. The killer discovered Wells was wearing a wire.
“He began to start taking a step or two backward,” Wells said. “Before I could think about even drawing a gun, she had the guy tackled.”
But most people in Ocean County who had heard of Laurel Hester knew only of her fight to leave her pension benefits to Stacie Andree, her loving companion of more than five years.
And more people know her now, since her gut-wrenching struggle with both rapidly advancing lung cancer and a stubborn Ocean County Board of Freeholders has been chronicled in “Freeheld.”
The 38-minute documentary by Cynthia Wade won a special jury prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. That honor was followed by many others, including an Academy Award nomination in the “Best Documentary Short Subject” category.
Wade did not plan on making a film about Laurel Hester. She had just given birth to her second child and was directing and shooting other projects. But when she read an article about Hester, she decided to attend a freeholder meeting where Hester planned to speak. She brought her camera.
“From that initial meeting, during which I introduced myself to Laurel and Stacie, I rapidly fell into their story, struggle and their lives,” Wade said.
She slept in the guest bedroom of their home off and on for the last eight weeks of Hester’s life.
“I quickly moved from being filmmaker to friend,” Wade said.
The documentary alternates between scenes filmed at several freeholder meetings and moments at home with Hester, Andree and their two dogs and cats, as her health rapidly deteriorates.
One scene filmed in the hospital shows Hester and Andree shortly after they learned the malignancy had spread to her brain. They both cry, holding each other, and rocking back and forth.
Stacie makes calls to insurance companies, trying to arrange monthly payment schedules for bills.
“Tell them I can send them $50 a month,” Hester tells her with a raspy voice.
Hester says in the film that both the chief of investigations and the prosecutor knew she was gay, but kept it quiet.
“That was fine with me,” she said. “I was there to work.My goal was to be a detective, the best detective I could be.”
Her unwanted battle with the Board of Freeholders began shortly after she learned she had stage 3 lung cancer. Hester wanted to leave the pension benefits she had earned during her 24 years in the Prosecutor’s Office to Andree, who would not be able to stay in the Point Pleasant home they had shared for years on her $23,800 yearly salary.
Hester asks the board to pass a resolution allowing county employees to pass on benefits to same-sex partners, just as heterosexual employees are already allowed to do. The state Domestic Partners Act leaves it up to counties to decide.
“After spending 25 years of my life fighting for justice for other people, I’m at a point in my life where the only thing that matters is justice for the woman that I love,” she tells the board.
Freeholder Joseph C. Vicari tells Hester her situation “hurts” him, then blames the board’s inaction on the state Legislature. His statement is greeted with shouts of “Shame on you!’ from some audience members.
Afew weeks later, Hester was too sick to go to another freeholder meeting. So friends videotaped a message from her to be played to the freeholders. She stares at the camera, bald, dark circles under her eyes, and speaks in a labored whisper.
“I just wanted to let you know time is of the essence,” she said. “All I’m asking for is that you sign the resolution and you make a change. A change for good. A change for righteousness.”
The freeholders sit stone-faced and silent while the tape is played. Finally, Freeholder John C. Bartlett Jr. gives a blunt response.
“It’s not a matter of can you pay,” Bartlett says. “We have money in the bank. It’s a matter of are you going to pay. Benefits are part of negotiated contract settlements. It’s not our position to say “Yes, we’ll just spend more money.’ ”
Don Bennett and Margaret Bonafide, two local reporters, both say on the film that Freeholder John P. Kelly said passing the resolution would circumvent the sanctity of marriage. Kelly denies he made such a statement at one of the board meetings and claims he was misquoted.
“I simply said it’s a moral issue,” Kelly said.
WhenWells gets up and asks if the board plans on “changing their minds before Laurel Hester dies,” Freeholder Gerry P. Little adjourns the meeting.
Hester’s condition continues to worsen. A hospice worker gently asks her one day how she is feeling and Hester starts to cry.
“I’m preoccupied with when,” she rasps. A few days later, the couple gets a call. The freeholders
have called an emergency meeting to discuss extending the pension benefits. Jack Kelly does not attend. The camera focuses on his empty seat.
“I have called this meeting because time is of the essence,” Little says.
Andree and Wells wheel Hester into the meeting room. Bald and on oxygen, she is too weak to stand. But she is there. The camera pans to Little and Bartlett. Their eyes water at the sight of her.
Vicari says he received a call from Gov. Jon Corzine at home over the weekend, urging them to pass the resolution
extending the benefits.
Bartlett tells the audience he has looked at the situation from a “rather narrow perspective.”
“The phone call Freeholder Vicari got from the governor went a long way to say to this freeholder
it is appropriate for us to face what has been a
difficult situation for many people,” Bartlett
said.
Andree and Hester hold hands while the freeholders unanimously approve the resolution.
Hester is wheeled to the microphone. It is the last public statement she will ever make.
“People like Stacie and I are just average
people that have a home and a couple of dogs and pay our taxes,” she said. “We just wanted
everything to be equal.”
The four freeholders rise to their feet and
applaud.
Laurel Hester died several weeks later, at
home. She was 49. New Jersey State Police officers
carried her ashes into her funeral service at
the church.
“Freeheld” ends with footage of Laurel Hester in
healthier days, swimming in blue water with two dolphins. She hangs onto their tails as they take her for a ride and laughs.
“Freeheld” is not an easy film to watch. It’s not an easy film to ignore.