By Bill Simons

Navigating the American Christmas season is not easy for many Jews. Christmas music, lights, decorations, movies, cards, gifts, greetings and good cheer appear almost everywhere – but we are not really part of it. Relating the Hanukkah story of the Maccabees across the generations, lighting the menorah candles for eight nights with the shamash while reciting the blessings, spinning the dreidel, eating latkes and exchanging presents are warm, meaningful and treasured traditions. But that still leaves many Jews apart from the festivities of their communities. 
If you are a divorced, middle-aged Jewish parent whose children are not with you during the holiday season, it is easy to feel like Tiny Tim on a cold street peering into a festive home tableau of a family celebrating a joyful Christmas. And circa 1990, my friend Armand and I were divorced, middle-aged Jewish fathers whose children would spend the peak of the holiday seasons with their mothers. Drinking a beer or two and munching Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn while watching a rented Blockbuster movie on a VCR appeared a bleak prospect. 
So, Armand and I decided we would participate in the spirit of Christmas – compassion, generosity, gratitude, joy – but on our own terms as Jews. We would volunteer for the Oneonta (NY) Friends of Christmas, delivering meals to neighbors, friends and total strangers. At the First United Methodist Church, we entered fellowship hall and the embury room to exchange greetings with other volunteers. The scene made you feel like a character in the concluding Christmas scene of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Preparing to navigate roads, sometimes covered by snow with intermittent patches of ice, Armand and I received delivery assignments and packed enough hot meals to fill the car’s back seat and trunk. Poverty, immobility and/or loneliness were common amongst the recipients, who invariably greeted us warmly, often inviting us into their homes to share holiday greetings. If we finished our route early, we came back to get a second delivery assignment. At the end of our travels, we returned to the church to share the sit-down Christmas meal. Following the spirit of the day, we sat with “guests” rather than with other volunteers. The program gave Armand and me the opportunity to perform a mitzvah while sharing in warm fellowship with celebrants of Christmas. 
My dear friend Armand La Potin was a mensch. Our shared Judaism provided one of the strong bonds between us. Given that neither of us was inclined toward ritual or theology, our Jewish connection rested more on history, family and sensibility. For us, the Jewish sensibility came out in mockery of pomposity and unjust authority, digressions into skepticism, identification with the underdog, compassion, loud and emotional conversations, and an affinity for communicating something to each other in a public setting that those outside “the tribe” would not catch. Our indulgences of wit were more Milton Berle than Noel Coward. 
In Salt Lake City, organizational home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Armand and I lingered over a plaque at the site of the settlement’s first Jewish temple, Congregation B’nai Israel. The re-enactment of the “Gun Fight at the OK Corral” in Tombstone led us to remark that while the Clantons didn’t fell Wyatt Earp, he is buried in a Jewish cemetery next to his wife, the former Josie Marcus. An exhibit at Philadelphia’s Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History prompted Armand and me to consider that the question of “who is a Jew” is less important than “what is a Jew.” When the Philadelphia Phillies’ Mike Lieberthal hit a home run, we joined the hometown cheer because the catcher was Jewish. We savored outsized corned beef sandwiches at the pre-eminent Jewish delis in New York City, the Carnegie Deli, and Los Angeles, Canter’s. A subdued tone accompanied our tour of the Holocaust Museum LA in the Fairfax district. Armand loaned me his copy of “The Winds of War” with instructions to watch the explicit gas chamber scene. Over the decades, Armand and I attended several Passover seders and many High Holiday services together, often sharing stories during post-service walks about our own Jewish journeys, including his coming of age as an “Edgies” camp counselor. At my son’s bris in 1984, Armand assisted the mohel and did a good job, as evidenced by Joe’s five children. 
It is not surprising that two loud, opinionated and physically demonstrative men would occasionally argue, but those intervals were transitory. The glue was a genuine affinity for sharing joy in the passions of the other, trains for Armand and baseball for me. So, in Baltimore, we toured the B&O Railroad Museum and rode the light rail, visited Babe Ruth’s boyhood home and took in a ball game at Camden Yards. 
Along with our friend Gerrit Gantvoort, a frequent partner on Armand’s numerous and diverse train adventures, I was the co-best man at his wedding to Carolyn, and Armand reciprocated when I married Nancy. Armand and I confided to each other how lucky we were since it’s not who you start with but who you finish with that counts. And Carolyn and Nancy, both strong, sensible, stable, loving Midwestern ladies, brought new happiness to our lives. 
Even after Armand and Carolyn retired to Tucson, he still returned to Oneonta once or twice a year, typically for close to a week at a time. For decades, an annual drive to the Hyde Park home of our hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was part of the annual itinerary. We debated the restraints on FDR’s ability to take further action during the Holocaust. 
SUNY Oneonta professor of history (with an office that adjoined mine), administrative jack-of-all trades, prolific author, city councilman, numismatist, chef, Keeshond whisperer, restorer of classic cars, cruise ship adventurer, philanthropist – Armand merits a megillah. 
He was a loving husband, father, stepfather, grandfather and great-grandfather. 
Despite his own serious health issues, Armand endured the long trip from Arizona to Central New York in March 2025 when I had a heart attack to comfort Nancy and me, sustaining us through a hard passage. 
In mid-December 2025, the phone rang. Armand, then in hospice with kidney failure, said, “Sit down – I’m dying. I am not afraid and I am not in pain.” I kept up the pretense of composure until putting down the receiver. Armand died the next day, December 18. I will light the yahrzeit candle.