Fearless life made Pete Seeger a 'man of the people'

Pete Seeger may have sung, written or adapted some of the world's greatest folk songs — including "If I Had a Hammer," "We Shall Overcome" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!" — but he lived and loved to sing them here in his beloved Hudson Valley.

Seeger died Monday night at 94 at New York Presbyterian Hospital, where he'd been for six days. He was serenaded earlier that night by folk legends Judy Collins and Peter Yarrow.

During his more than half a century in the Hudson Valley, Seeger would pack his worn banjo with the inscription "This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender" into his old Subaru at his cabin atop a mountain in Beacon. With his late wife Toshi at his side, he'd drive to sing those songs at a third-grade assembly in Fishkill, a double Dutch jump-roping contest in Newburgh or a benefit for a public radio station in the western Sullivan County hamlet of Jeffersonville.

"Yes, he was a legend," said a secretary at Fishkill's Glenham Elementary School, recalling how much Seeger did to clean up the Hudson River with his sloop Clearwater, "but he was a local legend."

"His biggest message he gave me to was to stay home and work locally," said Orange County union official, Jerry Ebert, director of organizing of Teamster Local 445, who sang and traveled with Seeger over the past 42 years, and recalls how much he loved to sing and play for children who had no idea who the old man with the gray beard was.

As one of the countless singer-songwriters Seeger influenced — the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian — said from his Woodstock home: "He was the grandfather of us all."

And like a caring grandfather, Seeger was there whenever a local cause needed him.

He sang up and down the Hudson to clean up the river his handmade home overlooked. He sang for unions in Newburgh, against fracking in Albany, for an Occupy Wall Street protest in Kingston and at virtually every anti-war rally around — even though he was a World War II veteran who went to his local VFW meetings.

And even though Seeger's voice — and body — grew frail over the past few years, he never stopped singing for those whose voices may not have been strong enough to speak for themselves.

"What struck me most about Pete was how brave he was," said Woodstock's guitarist Larry Campbell, who also performed with Seeger. "He was going to speak the truth no matter what obstacle was out in front of him and there were plenty, from McCarthy to Nixon."

Campbell was referring to Senator Joseph McCarthy, who accused Seeger of being a communist during the 1950s. When Seeger refused to answer, he was indicted for contempt of Congress and sent to jail, where he learned a song, "If this judge believed what I say, I'll be leaving for home today."

Then, even though Seeger was blacklisted from playing big gigs on television, he kept on singing, at summer camps in the Catskills and glitzy resorts in the Borscht Belt.

"If there was one word to describe Pete, it would be 'fearless,'" said Middletown's Jerry Kleiner, whose wife was a cousin of Toshi Seeger.

"He was fearless of heights," said Kleiner, who recalled Seeger climbing a 40-foot ladder, much to Toshi's dismay. "He was fearless of any crowd size and he was fearless to sing for anything he believed in."

Born in New York City on May 3, 1919, Seeger sang on some of the world's biggest stages — from marches on Washington to President Obama's inaugural celebration at the Lincoln Memorial. But the folk singer remained one of the most local of folks. During the Iraq war, he stood alone on Route 9 in Beacon in a snowstorm, holding a sign with just one word, "Peace."

"Anything that supported the community, Pete was there," said Kleiner. "He was a man of the people. He didn't think the world would change from some big action. He thought it would change from a million little actions."

Or, as Seeger himself said in a 1994 interview with the Times Herald-Record:

"Heaven isn't one big revolution of workers taking hold and heaven throwing open the gates. What's going to change the world is millions and millions of small revolutions. You've got to clean up the waterfront, stop landfills, provide decent health care.

"I can't do it myself. You can't do it yourself. But together ... You've got to make people want to live, and one of the ways is through music."

sisrael@th-record.com