Mary Travers Continued

And there were other voices, other songs. But Peter, Paul, and Mary led them all, or I thought they did. When she sang, "Come mothers and fathers, throughout the land, and don't criticize if you can't understand..." I was thrilled beyond words. And I look back now, and think that they really shaped us, especially the children who didn't grow up where people were assured the vote, regardless of skin color; where "separate but equal" applied to schools, toilets, bus seats, drinking fountains. It's true; I had parents who were out of the ordinary, who talked with me about how disgraceful the situation was in the south--and long before the days of the Movement. Still, they lived there; they were conventional; and they were (I thought) old.

Ah, Peter, Paul and Mary. Through the years they became old friends--where did the time go? Was it really fifty years ago that we went to see them at the Municipal Auditorium in Nashville? That the focus shifted not only to reflect the sorry state of racial tensions, but of an unpopular, bloody war. We marched, we sang, we chanted. And years later, when it had become less necessary to be radical every minute, they still kept us thinking. Their voices were starting to crack and they were getting on up there, but so were we. Still, nobody could quite say it the way Peter, Paul, and Mary did.

And now, she's gone. It seems hard to believe; it wasn't supposed to happen. Mary was supposed to be forever twenty-five. But she, like the rest of us, got old. Things went wrong the doctors couldn't fix. Someday soon, I'll get out the records and the later CD's and play them all. Not yet; I haven't really thought about it, but the time wasn't quite right. I wonder how Peter and Paul are; how can they possibly ever think of singing again? And yet, I know they will. They will, because good songs, important songs have to be sung.