Laird Cermak was to become President of INS in February 2000, taking over the responsibilities for leading a scientific society he loved and served for over a quarter of a century. In many ways he embodied the very values the INS has always hoped to promote in excellence of scholarship, keen interest in behavioral neurosciences, and an easy and reflexive interdisciplinary citizenship. His name has been synonymous with a distinctive line of intellectual inquiry in amnesia and memory mechanisms for as long as I have been in neuropsychology myself.