Allen Emer was tragically killed last Friday when lightning struck his hammock at Round Valley State Park Star Ledger article, June 26 Al was a gentle, caring, outgoing, enthusiastic person who always seemed to be smiling. He loved his sailboat, his balloons, his job, and most of all his lovely wife Sue, and son Sean. Al was a great cameraman and I worked with him many times as a producer. He was always tirelessly committed to working and getting the best "moments", as he put it, no matter how long it took. I remember on one of our first jobs together, being exhausted at the end of the day and begging Al to stop shooting. He turned to me and said: "You'll thank me for it tomorrow!" And he was right. We had a lot of other adventures, like when we were shooting Dean Kamen, the inventor, up in New Hampshire, and I started fooling around with this ball-bearing "thingy" in Dean's office. It of course started to fall apart and I went into a major panic trying to reconstitute it before Dean came back. Al, of course, thought it was hysterical and likened me then, as well as a few other times, to the Leslie Nielsen character in the Naked Gun series. We did a lot of shoots together, including a sweltering couple of days in Jacksonville in the middle of July. I remember one night, after having a couple of beers, Al lying on top of our rental car and looking up at the stars, trying to find some comet or something that was supposed to be visible. I was ready to give up, and told Al I wanted to get going, but he insisted on waiting to see if the cloud cover would lift so he might be able to see the comet. So we hung out a little while longer. He said: "You'll thank me for it tomorrow." We never did see the comet, but he was right anyway. Al, you'll be sorely missed.