Daniel Kremer, a former presiding justice of the state appellate court’s San Diego branch and former member of the state Judicial Council, has died. He was 88. The highly regarded jurist, who overcame polio as a young teen, died Feb. 17 in Del Mar following a short illness, his family said. Kremer ’s career took him from the state Attorney General’s Office to the San Diego Superior Court bench, then quickly to the 4th District Court of Appeal, Division 1, where he spent the last 18 years of his career before retiring in 2003. Among his accolades: The state Judicial Council in 2002 tapped him as Jurist of the Year, the highest honor that body bestows. “When I think of Dan, I think of excellence,” said U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller, who met Kremer in the 1970s when both worked in the state Attorney General’s Office in San Diego. Miller called Kremer “a natural leader, engaged and respected by everyone.” “His temperament was always one of patience and civility, and a tireless work ethic. He always combined those qualities with a scholarly approach to the law,” Miller said. Gary Schons, who Kremer hired as a deputy attorney general in San Diego in the 1970s, said Kremer was clear with the staff that “the most important thing was integrity.” And he was “dedicated to the rule of law.” “Dan was the consummate public servant, public lawyer and judicial officer,” said Schons, who led the attorney general’s criminal division in the San Diego office as Kremer had done years before. Presiding Justice of the 4th District Court of Appeal. Division 1, Daniel Kremer, in undated photo. (Court of Appeal, 4th Appellate District, Division 1) During his time as a presiding justice of the appellate court, Kremer served three years as a member of the California Judicial Council, the policy-making body over the state’s courts, from 1991 to 1994. Kremer chaired the council’s Rules and Forms Committee and co-chaired its first Court Technology Committee. In the late 1990s, he chaired the Task Force on Court Facilities, which the Legislature created. It was responsible for assessing the physical condition of every single courthouse in the state and recommending ways to bring them up to acceptable standards, according to the Judicial Council. He also chaired the council’s Committee on Criminal Trial Delay Reduction and its Library Technology Committee. Kremer was born in Olympia, Wash., on Nov. 21, 1937. When he was 13 years old, a few years before the Salk vaccine, he was struck with polio. The then-high school freshman spent four months hospitalized in a large ward with other kids, some in iron lungs. “Your life changes,” he said in a 2005 interview recorded for the California Appellate Court Legacy Project. His sons said the bout with polio permanently weakened Kremer’s lower left leg, and he wore a brace from his hip down. When a teenage Kremer was well enough to go back to school, he was drawn to theater and debate. It would serve him well. In college at Stanford University, he became captain of the Stanford debate team, “and we debated four years quite successfully,” he said in the Legacy Project video. Schons said debating set Kremer “on the path of intellectual brilliance, the ability to articulate a position and persuasively advance it in an objective manner so that it could be appreciated by others.” While still an undergraduate majoring in political science, Kremer considered becoming a teacher until a constitutional law class served as the catalyst to enter law school, he said during the Legacy Project interview. He earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford in 1960 and his law degree from Stanford in 1963. Kremer soon took a job with the Attorney General’s Office in Sacramento, where he handled criminal trials and appeals, including death penalty cases before the California Supreme Court, according to the Judicial Council. His sons both point to a fateful day in 1963 when Kremer met a young woman by the name of Kathryn at the mailboxes of their Sacramento apartment building. He proposed a week later. She accepted. In 1972, after nine years in Sacramento and now married with two sons, Kremer was sent to the attorney general’s San Diego office to head its criminal division. “He was a good lawyer and a really fine leader,” Schons said. In 1983, Kremer was tapped as chief assistant to Attorney General John Van de Kamp, heading the criminal division statewide while remaining based in San Diego. Later that same year, then-Gov. George Deukmejian appointed Kremer to the San Diego Municipal Court. He was among Deukmejian’s first judicial appointments. Two years later, in 1985, Deukmejian elevated Kremer to be presiding justice of the 4th District Court of Appeal, Division 1. Kremer won re-election twice and stayed in that job until his retirement in 2003 at the age of 65. Miller remembers Kremer as “a man of great character” who had “the ability to lead other high-achieving professionals with mutual respect.” Schons said he’s “never heard anyone utter anything but praise” for Kremer. Kremer was active outside of the court as well, including his volunteer work decades ago with the KPBS Radio Reading Service, where he read entire newspapers to be broadcast for people who were visually impaired. His family said he also served as a lector and canon lawyer at St. James Catholic Church in Solana Beach. “He accomplished incredible things without ever seeking any spotlight or attaching any self-aggrandizement,” son Aaron Kremer said. Brendan Kremer said his father’s physical challenges after polio “never stopped him.” Instead, he turned “to his other skill, which was his brain.” “Throughout his life, that became his greatest asset. He was brilliant. Whether he was on the bench, in the Attorney General’s Office, or as a dad, he just was there to always be someone you could talk to.” After retirement, Kremer and his wife traveled extensively in Europe. His family said he also loved theater, history and auto racing. “Never miss the Long Beach Grand Prix,” he said in the 2005 interview. Kremer and wife Kathryn were married for 56 years until her death in 2020 at age 79. “They were an extension of each other,” Brendan said of his parents. Kremer is survived by sons Aaron and Brendan, daughter-in-law Susan and two granddaughters. Services will be April 24 at St. James Catholic Church in Solana Beach. In lieu of flowers, Kremer’s family requests donations to the Ashland Shakespeare Festival or KPBS. ...read more read less