Longtime Carmel gallery owner and community activist Richard Kreitman dies at 77.

Richard Kreitman, who described Carmel as his idea of “paradise,” was deeply involved in local civic life from the moment he and his family moved to town in 2001. He died on Saturday, Oct. 10 at 77 after a brief illness from an aggressive form of cancer. He was surrounded by family and friends. 

The next day, some of those family and friends honored Kreitman with a Carmel tradition he was tied to for many years: ringing church bells at noon. On Oct. 11, they honored his memory with a “triple ring,” utilizing three sets of bells. (He also led the charge fundraising and finding a foundry for a new bell in the World War I memorial arch on Ocean Avenue.)

“He famously called himself the chief village ding-dong,” says Kreitman’s son Aaron. That kind of self-effacing humor was a signature of Kreitman’s—he was a relentless participant in local government and understood he could be a thorn in people’s side. 

He campaigned three times (unsuccessfully) for a seat on the board of Carmel Unified School District, on a promise to bring attention to the budget process and earned a reputation as “that prickly spreadsheet guy,” a title he wore as a badge of honor. But even as he focused on details, Kreitman was a perpetual booster for Carmel.

“It came from a place of love, because he wanted to make a difference, and he wanted to be engaged in his community,” Aaron Kreitman says. “He always had good intentions. He was a proud busybody.”

He shared that approach with current CUSD board member Rita Patel, who says she connected with Kreitman immediately after meeting and they got involved in school issues. They served together on the River School PTA and he led the creation of an after-school program there that still exists today. 

They also learned how to get involved in governance. "We are both squeaky wheels, trying to make a better place. We bonded over that," Patel says. "We bounced ideas off each other and asked questions—when you're a squeaky wheel, it's 'When is it too much, when is it not enough?' He was my sounding board."

Kreitman developed a love of coastal living early in life, growing up near Rockaway Beach in New York, and said he worked as a beach lifeguard for five summers.

The Kreitman family moved to Carmel in 2001. He and his wife, artist Barbara Kreitman, opened Gallery North in downtown Carmel three years later. (Barbara operated the gallery successfully for 20 years, exhibiting and selling contemporary art, until closing in 2024.) 

It was Kreitman’s second time living in what he described to the Weekly as paradise, after a stint living in Costa Rica working as a foreign service officer. (He then worked as an agricultural economist for USAID before going into a career as a financial adviser.) 

Their sons, Nick and Aaron, were just entering Carmel schools when the family arrived in town, and Kreitman first got involved in local government at the school board level. He served on the Carmel Middle School PTO, Carmel River School PTA, Carmel High School Foundation board, River School and High School Site Councils, and more.

“I want to contribute to the community as much as I can,” he told the Weekly.

After getting involved with the schools, he got involved with city government. Kreitman described himself as “just a concerned citizen” when he ran for council in 2016, and in many ways embodied that. For years, he attended nearly every City Council meeting. He said he submitted a complaint to the Monterey County Civil Grand Jury that led to an investigation in 2015 on the heels of personnel churn in City Hall.

Kreitman described that time as “one of the worst periods this city has ever been through.”

But he viewed it as an opportunity to serve. 

“I’ve offered a lot of pretty blunt criticism,” he told the Weekly during his 2016 campaign. “I figure now it’s time for me to be on the other side of that table.”

He did not win, but he was happy to see Carmel overcome a divisive time. He envisioned moving on to solving other challenges in a collaborative way.

“The real challenge is to balance this wonderful hometown of ours—objectively one of the best places on the planet to live—with being one of the most popular visitor destinations in the world,” he said. “There’s the balance between residential and business: It shouldn’t be confrontational, it should be cooperative. I always look for that which we can all agree on, and move from there.”

Besides politics, he did also contribute to less controversial things, such as serving as an Eagle Scout troop leader, even after his children aged out of scouting. “He was everywhere,” Aaron says. “My dad just gave and gave and gave to this community.”

"From ringing the bell to making sure our kids know how to read and write, he had a wide range," Patel says. "He was a force."