Mary Travers is dead, over forty years after Peter, Paul and Mary hit the charts. My sister was in high school at the time. With the infinite wisdom of a big sister, she told me to listen to them. Their music was groovy, she said, but it wasn’t just groovy. Their songs had messages about civil rights, which she was passionate about, and lots of important stuff. They were politically active, she said.
So I listened to their music with her. I liked it because it rhymed and was pretty, and Mary was pretty, and I coveted her long blond hair. But I couldn’t make heads or tails of the politics and thought my sister was reading way too much into their lyrics. Still, we listened together, and while she dreamed of marching on Washington to If I Had a Hammer and Blowin‘ in the Wind, I stood in front of the mirror and imagined growing out my short, brown hair, dyeing it blond and tossing it over my shoulder just like Mary Travers.
In the fall of my sister’s senior year, when I was in ninth grade, the school was buzzing with news of a youth group coffee shop above one of the Main Street stores in town. A live trio (two boys and a girl) of high school students who sounded just like Peter, Paul and Mary sang at the coffee shop on the weekends, and according to our junior high scuttlebutt, it was the coolest of all the cool places to be after the football games on Friday night.
When I asked Mom if I could go, she said no. But my sister, who didn’t think the trio was quite as good as we ninth graders did, went to bat for me. She convinced Mom the coffee shop was not a den of iniquity, and that it was safe for me to go there with a friend. The romantic atmosphere nearly bowled me over the night we went: the checkered table clothes over empty wooden spools, the kind used to hold electrical cable. And every table had a candle stuck in an old wine bottle. I was certain no one had drunk the wine in the bottles, just poured it down the sink and stuck in the candles.
When the trio started to sing, I was transported. My sister had been right. They weren’t all that good, but maybe because I was hearing the music live and not on a recording, the power and poignancy of the lyrics touched something deep inside. From that moment on, I loved Peter, Paul and Mary not because my sister said I should or because the kids at school thought they were cool, but because their music made me believe I could help make the world better.
Almost forty years later, I’m not sure if I’ve accomplished the dreams they instilled within me. But I do know this. Mary Travers and her music (along with my big sister) made my world a better place. She’s gone, but what a legacy she has left us.
Thank you, Mary Travers. You’ll be missed.
