Director’s Note

A Man Undaunted

From Executive Director Fish Stark

Headshot of Lou Appognani, on a boat in a river.

Lou Appignani was a man undaunted.

Lou, who passed on Wednesday, was the American Humanist Association’s biggest funder in our history, and the namesake of our Appignani Humanist Legal Center. He never tried to tell us what cases we should or shouldn’t take. He had one instruction. 

“Be aggressive,” he said to me the first time we met. 

Lou wanted to build a world where atheists and humanists were proud of who we are. Where we didn’t mumble our identities out of fear of offending others or being attacked. Where we could live openly, fully, and undaunted – just like he did all of his life. 

Lou wasn’t a lawyer, but he cared about legal work for what it signified. He believed our movement should be willing to stand up forcefully to bullies, to be tough and assertive in defense of our ideals. He believed that taking on tough fights is the best way to show what you stand for – and that by defending the legal rights of humanists and atheists, we’d send a message to people hiding in the shadows across the country that it was OK to be themselves. 

And Lou believed deeply in helping people be themselves. We connected over our shared background in education entrepreneurship. Lou built his fortune creating professional training programs across the country – including programs that taught computer skills well before the advent of the home PC. He believed in giving people the skills to live lives of purpose and choice. He cared about bioethics because he wanted people to be able to live long, full, healthy lives on a thriving planet. 

Lou was a humanist from a young age, but was inspired to be part of the humanist community in part through the works of Bertrand Russell. He believed in humanism because he felt it made people more moral and responsible – he believed that thinking for ourselves leads us to better decisions than following dogma.

And Lou led by example with his commitment to philanthropy. He funded public radio, universities, the arts, and women’s shelters. But he cared particularly deeply about building the humanist and atheist community.

Lou was the AHA’s largest funder in our history. And he cared about bringing people along with him. In 2008, he gave the AHA a historic matching grant of $1 million – helping us reach a new level of growth and encouraging countless others to support humanism. 

Through his support of the Appignani Humanist Legal Center, we’ve worked together to fight discrimination against nonbelievers in America – standing up for children experiencing proselytization at school, protecting our tax dollars from being used to promote religion, and standing up for our community’s civil rights. I only wish that Lou had been around to see what the AHLC is going to do in the next few weeks – I think he would have been proud. 

When my Dad passed, I wrote a list of ten good ways to be like him, and have tried to live in line with them ever since. That’s how we humanists honor those who have passed – we remember their memory, embody their best qualities, and keep the values they lived alive in the world. 

We all carry Lou’s legacy forward by being generous, by being brave, by being outspoken. By being willing to be a bit subversive. By being curious and creative about empowering others. By standing up to discrimination wherever we see it. By thinking for ourselves, never accepting easy answers, and pushing ourselves to be better. 

These are humanist values, and they were Lou’s. 

We miss him, and we will keep fighting for humanism in his honor. 

For humanity,

Fish Stark

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