Life lessons from humane hero of human resources

I talked to one of my business heroes on Sept. 24, a couple of weeks before he died this past Wednesday.

David Singer, 55, in the last stages of a valiant battle with leukemia, seemed more concerned with how I was doing. Typical.

He was sleeping and watching more TV than he ever thought possible, he joked.

Singer, a small-company HR guy who volunteered to help hundreds, maybe thousands, of unemployed over the last decade, then told me about his last mission.

"I was at the job-support group meetings at St. Andrew's Church in Eden Prairie and Colonial Church of Edina in August," he confided in a hopeful whisper. "I told them that the job market was going to turn around, that we were starting a recovery. There's a buzz. There's hope. And it doesn't help until you've got a job, I know, because I've been without a job. But I told them that a lot of people were going back to work."

In recent weeks, Singer was too exhausted to tune up a résumé, counsel a hopeful applicant or console somebody who came a cropper.

Instead he heard from hundreds who wrote and called him. His Web page on the CaringBridge site had about 35,000 visits over the last year.

"He would do anything to assist somebody, particularly somebody who was looking for work," said his wife, Terri Behrends-Singer. "He came into my life in 1985 and I had two boys. We didn't share faiths, but our values meshed. We raised Jeff and Chris, now 33 and 36, to be well-rounded, independent thinkers."

The boys, an Army soldier and a self-employed handyman, loved David for his humor, upbeat manner and compassion.

"He had down times. But he didn't complain about his diagnosis," Terri said. "He always concentrated on the positive things."

I met David in 2003. He was out of work. He was doing a bit of consulting and looking for a job. He also spent many afternoons and evenings counseling individuals and moderating job-support groups. He particularly loved to call on folks who had "landed" a job after weeks or months. The payment was in the joy.

"I was brought up by my parents and in Judaism in a way that teaches that the greatest deed you can do is a deed for someone who cannot be of service to you," he told me. "Plus, working with people keeps me sharp."

"It will be my sad task to finish an article on which David and I were collaborating entitled ... 'Oh My Gosh, I Got the Job! Now, What?!'" said Paul Sears, a senior employment counselor with the Minneapolis Workforce Center. "He was the ultra-dedicated volunteer to the job-search support groups."

I told David during our last chat that I remembered what he had once told me about the goodness in helping others.

"That's the best 'mitzvah' a person can do," he responded. "To help someone who is not in a position to help you. It's like unconditional love." We could use a little more of that in a business world recently noted for huge frauds, mass layoffs and less and less trust, I offered. He chuckled.

"David would say, 'We get what we get,'" said his sister Jane Singer. "It's how we deal with it that matters. I am so blessed. He was not just my brother, but a good man and a good friend."

David's life will be celebrated Sunday at 1 p.m. at Temple Israel, 2324 Emerson Av. S., and at a luncheon at 3 p.m. at House of Prayer Lutheran Church, 7625 Chicago Av., Richfield. The family prefers memorials to the David Singer Scholarship Fund at University of Minnesota-Duluth, 1049 University Drive, Duluth, MN 55812.