Mary Travers, the passionate female voice of Peter, Paul and Mary, had been sick for a long time. But she had kept performing and somehow I thought she would always be around.
And so I was unprepared and shocked when the news broke laast week that Travers had died at Danbury Hospital.
Travers was 72, which is also unsettling. The cause of her death was complications from chemotherapy for a bone marrow transplant she had several years ago after developing leukemia.
Her lengthy obituary in the New York Times also revealed that she had stage fright. It took a lot of persuading to get her to join Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey in 1961.
Their manager, Albert Grossman, wanted Travers to "retain an air of mystery," so she didn't speak on stage between songs, at least in their early period.
Well, she got over her stage fright, found her voice and never stopped talking.
Shortly before Peter, Paul and Mary did a revival show at the New Haven Coliseum in October 1980, I interviewed all three of them. Travers spoke to me from her home in Rredding, CT.
I remember that she was warm and friendly, as I had expected.
"I'm optimistic," she said. "I assume we won't blow ourselves off the map...I'm optimistic that we'll figure out how to be civilized."
At that time she was supporting Jimmy Carter for re-election and was about to ask Yarrow and Stookey to join her in that effort.
"The world is in chaos," she said. "This is no time for a beginner. The Europeans are terrified of (Ronald) Reagan -- as they should be."
You know the rest of the story. Reagan was elected president, launching a conservative movement against many of the values embodied by Peter, Paul and Mary.
And the world is still in chaos. We're still trying to figure out how to be civilized. Peter, Paul and Mary made it a little more so.

Yes, they're gone already, those tennis players; the circus has left town. (Alert film buffs will realize that in my headline I'm quoting Dorothy from "The Wizard of Oz": "My! People come and go so quickly here!")
I got out there to the Pilot Pen Tennis Tournament just once last week, but it was a good show on that Monday night. My wife, daughters and I saw Svetlana Kuznetsova defeat Jie Zheng in three sets, then watched the rising young Yank, Sam Querrey, oust the pouty Frenchman, Marc Gicquel, also in three sets (except we had to leave early for that one).
Some people don't bother with Pilot Pen because they don't know the players. Listen, we didn't even know who was playing until we showed up that night. But we did kknow we were going to see some great tennis by players who might soon be big names.
Querrey, for instance, is already turning heads at the U.S. Open with his 130 mph serves. This kid is going to be a star.
Pilot Pen is also about the food. I think my kids look forward to the big Food Court more than they do the tennis. The only problem is the area is so popular, the tables and picnic benches fill up very quickly; we ate sitting on the ground.
My wife and I were coming to this New Haven tournament before our kids were born, back when it was called the Volvo Tournament. We've seen John McEnroe (who famously tipped a TV camera into a cameraman's lap), Ivan Lendl, Lindsay Davenport, James Blake and many others. It's a cool thing for this town to have.
And you know what else? In the middle of the action, there came the announcement inviting all of us up in the "cheap seats" to come on down to join the elite! Try doing that at Yankee Stadium; those ushers would eat you up like a Yankee frank.
Kudos also to the organizers of Pilot Pen for keeping the between-sets music at a less-than-ear-splitting volume. That's not true at most sporting events.
My kids don't like it that you're not supposed to yell during tennis matches; it's seen as discourteous. But I like it. I find it a nice change from other entertainment.
Why did we leave the Querrey match early? It was 11:15 p.m. by the time they finished the first set. We had gotten a taste of the future and we left happy.
I sure hope this event has its sponsorship renewed. Can you imagine driving past that tennis stadium and seeing it empty 52 weeks a year rather than the current 51? r