There's a book at the studio with nearly a year's worth of Where's Armand? blog entries. It was printed as a Father's Day gift for Armand, from his daughter Ann and son-in-law, Tomas.
Just a year ago, Armand and Tomas were on a driving tour of national parks which prompted a post entitled "Roaming Free", which is just what Armand continues to do.
You may also remember that Armand went to Malta last year to attend a Conference of ISSEI. Fittingly, I received this beautiful message yesterday from Ezra Talmor:
Armand Singer - In Memoriam
I feel privileged to have personally known Armand. We first met at the conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI) held at the University of Graz, Austria in 1994. It was the first ISSEI conference in which Armand participated, but not the last, for he became a passionate ISSEI member and headed workshops in all the biannual conferences held thereafter.
My late wife Dr. Sascha Talmor, ISSEI co-founder and co-founding editor of the multidisciplinary journal The European Legacy, cultivated personal ties with our members and contributors, and immediately recognized in Armand a kindred spirit. That sense of affinity and of sharing the same moral scale assumed a stronger relevance given the divergent biographies of Armand and ourselves. We didn't talk personal because there was no need to. In fact, all we knew was that Armand had one daughter whom he dearly loved, and of course we also knew Armand's late wife, Mary, because they came together to ISSEI conferences.
Only very few participants stay till last day of the conference, when the closing session is held. Armand always did. Unfailingly, he would liven up the closing lecture with observations that bore the mark of his individualism and belief in the freedom of exploration.
An Armand anecdote will, I hope, convey the humanistic fervor which to us was his striking quality.
At an ISSEI forum held in 2005, we were on our way to have lunch. My daughter Avital, who knew Armand from all the previous conferences, was walking with Armand. At one point she referred to Armand being Jewish, to which he replied that he wasn't, adding that he hadn't made a point of telling us because he thought we were happy to think he was.
That was the Armand we knew. A person of very strong moral principles and sense of 'the other.'
It was Armand and no one else who captured in words the spirit on which ISSEI and The European Legacy are built, better than any of our conference participants or journal contributors - better than even Sascha or I did.
Armand deserves to be commemorated by West Virginia University for generations to come because he kept alive the flame of learning as an investigation of ideas for the sake of making human beings more human.
Ezra Talmor
Book Cover: Blurb.com
11th ISSEI CONFERENCE, Helsinki 2008 http://issei2008.haifa.ac.il/