Originally published July/Aug 2008 pp 44-47
By: Wendy Reid Crisp
Puff, the Magic dragon, bent his head in sorrow, lost his green scales and slipped off into his cave after Jackie Paper “came no more,” but that’s only the song. In the new book, based on the lyrics written by Peter Yarrow and Lenny Lipton and illustrated, magically, by Eric Puybaret, Puff finds a new friend- the daughter of Jackie Paper-and so the story goes on and seemingly will forever.
Yarrow is the “Peter” of Peter, Paul (Stookey) and Mary (Travers), the voices of our youth, the soundtrack, as others have written, of our political awareness.
The three began singing together in 1961 (Mary had sung professionally while still in high school, including stints with Pete Seeger; Paul had been a singing comedian at a club in Greenwich Village), and by 1963 they were the organizing musical performers for the March on Washington (where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech).
Vivid recollections make it impossible for someone of our generation to hear Peter, Paul and Mary sing “It’s the hammer of justice/It’s the bell of freedom/It’s the song about love between my brothers and my sisters all over this land…” and not have a heart-twisting memory of our youth, of our pure idealism and hope unstained by cynicism and grief.
While the trio still performs together occasionally, they’ve traveled individual roads of achievement as well; and for the last decade Peter Yarrow’s path has led into America’s public schools, where his message is a variation of “love between my brothers and my sisters.” Under the aegis of the nonprofit organization he founded, Operation Respect, he sings, talks and listens to children about compassion. Operation Respect has provided more than 140,000 copies of its “Don’t Laugh at Me” curriculum to teachers and other educators (now, in Egypt, Israel, Canada, Croatia, the Philippines, South Africa and Hong Kong) and has addressed more than half a million students.
Peter and his former wife, Mary Beth McCarthy (the niece of the late Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy, who was an anti-war Democratic presidential contender in 1968; Peter met Mary Beth at a rally in Portland, Oregon) have two adult children, Christopher and Bethany. Chris lives in Portland and is the co-owner of The Monkey and the Rat, a two-location emporium of Asian antiques; and Bethany lives in New York. A strikingly beautiful woman with a strong and passionate voice, Bethany, with her performing partner, cellist Rufus Cappadocia, travels throughout the world, taking the message of Operation Respect to war- and conflicttorn countries. As she was taken as a child to peace marches and concerts, she now takes her daughter, Valentina, 2.
For children-and grandparents-dragons do live forever.
We shouted “Hello!” in the entry hall of Chris’s eastside Portland Victorian and were rushed by greeters Chris, Bethany and Rufus, but no sign of Peter. Then, a leg crooked out from around the corner of a walnut doorframe, the loafer wiggled a bit, and he entered the room, hugs first, questions later.
“I don’t think consciously about creating a legacy. A certain point in time, you confront the question “How do I want to spend this part of my life?”-I was 70 the end of May-and I see it this way: There are two things that make up this phase of life: wisdom and perspective.