Peter, Paul and Mary singer/songwriter Peter Yarrow died Tuesday at his New York City home, Variety and The Guardian confirmed. He was 86 and had been diagnosed with bladder cancer four years ago.
Yarrow wrote or co-wrote many of the trio’s songs including “Day Is Done,” “Puff the Magic Dragon” and “The Great Mandela,” which he also sang. Their biggest hit was a cover of John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”
They participated in the March on Washington, singing Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala.
Recently, Yarrow co-founded Operation Respect in 1999 to address school bullying and performed at a Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange benefit in 2005 among a lifetime of political activism.
Noel Paul Stookey co-wrote with Yarrow and wrote Peter, Paul and Mary songs solo. Their third singer, Mary Travers, died in 2009.
Yarrow was convicted of “taking indecent liberties with a minor” in 1970. He called the incident with a 14-year-old girl in a Washington hotel room “the most terrible mistake I have ever made.”
President Carter pardoned Yarrow in 1981. At the time, Yarrow said he intended to teach his children, Bethany and Christopher, that he could make amends.
“It is my hope that they will see a balanced picture, one that understands that their daddy did something very wrong but also one that asserts that their daddy has also done much for society to help eliminate want and inequality where he saw it,” Yarrow said in his petition for pardon.
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