Former chief feels at home at Hominy Hill
Michael Beierschmitt served on Freehold force for 27 years
BY CLARE MARIE CELANO
Staff Writer

SCOTT PILLING staff Michael Beierschmitt, who retired as Freehold Borough's police chief on April 1, is enjoying his new job as a starter/ball boy at Hominy Hill Golf Course in Colts Neck.

For more than 27 years Michael Beierschmitt dressed in a uniform, packed a gun and wore a bulletproof vest in order to prepare for his work day. Now he dresses in khaki pants, a Monmouth County golf shirt and a hat, and he's ready to go.

Beierschmitt has made the leap from Freehold Borough chief of police to a position as a starter/ball boy at the Monmouth County Park System's Hominy Hill Golf Course in Colts Neck, and he couldn't be happier.

Beierschmitt retired from the Freehold Borough Police Depart-ment on April 1. The Borough Council named Capt. Mitch Roth as the officer in charge of the department until a new chief is named.

It would appear that golf courses are a fine place for former police chiefs to spend their days. Beierschmitt took up golf about four years ago and happened to run into one of his police chief buddies on the course.

John Demaree, the former West Long Branch police chief, was on the Hominy Hill course, but he wasn't golfing. He was working as a starter/ball boy and, according to Beierschmitt, was enjoying what he was doing.

Recalling that meeting, Beier-schmitt said Demaree asked him, "Remember how cranky I used to be?"

Crankiness has not found a place on the golf course for Dem-aree, and it won't for Beierschmitt either. At the time, Beierschmitt said, he thought it was an interesting idea and he "filed it away in the back of his mind" for future use.

The future came in January when Beierschmitt, who was planning to retire from the police department, applied for a position. He got one and now spends his days at Hominy Hill.

The former chief has had an interesting and very busy work history in police work and as a New Jersey National Guard reser-vist.

Born in St. Louis, Beierschmitt, 50, moved to New Jersey in 1964 when his father was transferred to Hightstown for his job with RCA. He was in the third grade at the time. He graduated from St. Rose of Lima School in the borough and from St. John Vianney High School, Holmdel.

He lives in the same house on East Main Street, Freehold, that he grew up in. Beierschmitt and his wife, Dee, are the parents of three children, Monica, 25, Matthew, 21, and Meghan, 20.

He met Dee after finishing his tour of duty in the Army in 1978. Dee was working in a bakery on Main Street and Beierschmitt was working in the borough's streets and roads department, waiting for a position to open up in the police department.

"I wanted a job with the structure I was used to in the military, and where I could work outside," he said in an interview last week. "I don't like working inside."

By 1979 he had been appointed to the police department and began a career that would last almost 28 years. Beierschmitt was promoted to sergeant in 1989, to lieutenant in 1998 and to chief in 2000. He also maintained his active status in the New Jersey Army National Guard and served the 1st Armor Battalion 254th regiment of the guard, Sea Girt, from 1989 until 2006 when he retired with the rank of E8.

He has been a member of the Freehold Fire Department's Goodwill Hook and Ladder Company for 20 years. Along with other area firefighters, Beierschmitt developed the Western Monmouth County Joint Underwater Task Force in 1988, created as a search and rescue team.

During the course of his career in law enforcement Beierschmitt received numerous honors and citations. He said the most memorable honor was when he was named Officer of the Year by the 200 Club of Monmouth and Ocean Counties, a nonprofit organization which presents awards each year to uniformed service members who have gone above and beyond the call of duty. Beierschmitt received the award in 1988 for the pursuit and apprehension of a suspect who was wanted for burglary and theft.

The incident occurred in September 1987 and involved a pursuit on foot through woods in the area of Orchard Street at midnight. In nominating Beierschmitt for the award, Police Chief William Burlew said the officer's actions were "an extreme act of bravery because he was in complete darkness alone and spent a half-hour stalking his assailants never knowing whether or not they were armed."

Beierschmitt said his instincts as a hunter helped him to catch the suspect; that and the fact he knew the area well, having grown up in town.

Over the years Beierschmitt initiated a bicycle patrol unit and a K-9 unit within the police department.

The former chief said he believes police work is much more difficult today than it was years ago and involves much more training. Important changes over the years that Beierschmitt witnessed included training in biohazard materials and chemical weapons, as well as an increase in instruction for police liability.

Dee Beierschmitt said her husband was never the type to bring his work home with him.

"What goes on in the job, stays in the job," she said, adding that if she wanted to know what was going on in Freehold she found out when she got to work at Federici's, where she has worked for 19 years.

"It's the just the way he is," she said.

In keeping with the philosophy that his job belongs at the job and not in his family life, Beierschmitt said he not only wholeheartedly supports the employee assistance program provided by Freehold Borough, he has taken advantage of the counseling program. He said he encouraged his officers to do the same.

"It's good to have someone to talk to about things," he said quietly.

Beierschmitt is now looking forward to doing the things he loves to do, like spending more time with his family and playing golf.

"It was a tough decision to make," he said of leaving the police department, adding that the three surgeries he underwent in the last few years helped him to put things into perspective and realize it was time to move in another direction.

Sitting in Federici's interviewing the former police chief while his wife served lunch to her customers presented a true slice of small-town America - a couple married for many years, making their home and raising their children in the town they grew up in - the husband becomes police chief while the wife raises their children and also works in a business that has been a part of the local landscape for 85 years.

When this parallel was referenced, Beierschmitt responded with a smile.

"Well, to quote Bruce Springsteen, this is 'My Hometown,' " he said.