Sad news from France

MARCEL HEUZÉ 1949–2017

Yesterday — August 20, 2017 — brought sad news from France: Marcel Heuzé, son of Marcel and Renée Heuzé, passed away.

I regret never having the honor of meeting Marcel in person, though we did have a few brief interactions:

The first was when Marcel mailed me a printed copy of Le Télégramme. The newspaper included a smiling color portrait of Marcel holding photocopies of his father’s letters. “On est tombé de l’armoire” he was quoted as saying in the article. That funny French phrase — we fell out of the wardrobe — described the shock of learning his father’s letters had been found (the phrase translated to the much-less-interesting, “we were flabbergasted”). I recall the day the manila envelope arrived. My heart raced and fluttered as I stared at the handwritten block-letters of the sender’s name: Marcel Heuzé. By that time, I knew his father’s fate — yet it felt surreal to hold a package bearing the same name as the name I had searched for so very long.

The next interaction was when I provided directions for Marcel to download a copy of P22 Marcel Script (a huge shout-out to P22 Type Foundry who generously helped me provide copies of the font files to family members). I don’t know what Marcel’s reaction was to seeing the loops and curves based on his father’s handwriting, but I hope he unequivocally felt his spirit in each glyph.

As soon as the first copies of the book were available, I mailed copies to members of the Heuzé family. I knew it would take a week or more for the books to be delivered, and my hope was that they would be in their hands by the book’s official launch date (June 6, 2017). Marcel did not speak or read English, but I hope he felt proud knowing testimony about his father’s time in Berlin and his parents’ love story was on the cusp of being launched into the world.

Marcel is survived by his wife and their daughter.