Mary Travers

Hey, I finally have something in common with Mary Travers – we’re both late. (I know, it’s not funny. Especially this one.)

Lots of people die, even famous ones – it’s part of life, and death. But something about Mary Travers’ passing really hitting me hard. I don’t know, maybe because while she was an internationally know, Grammy-winning artist, she was not a superstar in the unapproachable-traveling-with-entourage kind of way. She was a regular person, living a few miles from me and my family – the kind of local celebrity you’d see from time to time…hey isn’t that?

As a kid, my wife Jill had the honor of hearing Travers speak her name. My wife was a volunteer at the Ives Center in Danbury where Travers was performing. At the end of the performance, she read the list of volunteers’ names. It’s not quite the thrill of Bill Clinton citing you as inspirationfor a trip to North Korea, but in everyday life, it’s something.

Of course this personal connection to Travers pales in comparison to her musical accomplishments – 1/3 the seminal folk group Peter, Paul and Mary. But that’s what we keep of people after they’ve left us; the impact they’ve made on us personally.

I must have worn the grooves off my mother’s copy of Puff the Magic Dragon as a child listening to it over and over. And that’s without knowing the alleged drug reference, which I’ve just learned was never really about drugs anyway. The song and Burgess Meredith voiced-over movie taught me more about honesty, self-confidence and innocence than any piece of pop culture should be expected to.

I hope Mary is in Honalee.