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.