A Celebration of Life · Saturday, October 3, 2026
RICHARD P. HERMAN
Educator, Adventurer, Pied Piper · 1938 — 2026
He spent sixty years teaching people to sing, to take the risk, and to leave songs behind for other people to sing.
We are gathering at the camp he built, on Saturday, October 3, 2026, for swimming and a service, a potluck supper and a campfire. Not a funeral — a festival of the spirit he shared with all of us.
Stay the night
There are ninety beds.
Bunkhouse cabins on the property, first come first served. Bring a sleeping bag and a pillow.
88 of 90 beds left
2 confirmed
In their words
What people are saying about him
Hundreds of campers, counsellors and colleagues have written in. Here are a few.
I had the privilege of sitting with him Thursday night and Friday morning. I had my guitar and sang camp songs and Robert Frost poems and held his hand. It was peaceful. At some point in the hot Boston summer, "The Pronouncer" arrived in his black Tundra truck and recorded the death. It made me think of the Frost poem…
Today was Sunday Morning Meeting here at camp. At the end we played Give Yourself to Love, then Old Blue Heron, before kids moved onto the deck for brunch. A few campers and staff stayed behind to listen to camp songs — Circle Game, I'll Fly Away, Iowa. And as the last song played, a blue heron flew past the…
There are so many. But I remember singing old seafaring and drinking ballads with gleeful abandon — Fathom the Bowl, The Barley Mow, Strike the Bell. I remember one fine day at the waterfront, Richard and Roberge and I singing Pay Me, You Owe Me, creating verses as we went. Also By the Waters of Babylon — I remember…
My dad loved Bob Franke's question: What can you do with your days? And Franke's answer: Let your dreams bind your work to your play. Franke thought folk songs should travel. Someone hears one, carries it somewhere new, changes it, and makes it their own. Dad's ideas were his folk songs. International Friendship Camp…
