Events honor Harry Chapin, 30 years later

As a young man, Harry Chapin went through an aimless period, dropping out of college, even suffering some depression, say friends and relatives. His cure to shake off the blues was to embrace life as energetically as humanly possible.

"He did have a kind of underlying sadness that made him keep moving to get past it," said his widow, Sandy Chapin.

Chapin, who died 30 years ago this Saturday, left a lasting imprint on Long Island, his home for most of his adult years, and beyond.

He became a folk music star and a whirlwind of good works, mounting a major anti-hunger campaign, founding a ballet company and a philharmonic orchestra on Long Island, and playing -- constantly playing. The man famous for "Cat's in the Cradle" and "Taxi" did at least at least 200 concerts a year. Half were benefits for his various causes.

Today, many of those causes and organizations he helped create are still alive and thriving, including the Manhattan-based WhyHunger and LI Cares Inc.-The Harry Chapin Food Bank based in Hauppauge.

"His legacy is extraordinary," said Huntington Station resident Bill Ayres, a former Catholic priest who was one of his closest friends and heads WhyHunger. "He would be thrilled" with all the work still being done.

Concerts, book readings, radio broadcasts and other events are scheduled to mark the 30th anniversary of Chapin's death in a car wreck at the age of 38.

They include a free concert Saturday night at Heckscher Park's Chapin Rainbow Stage in Huntington, one of the places where Chapin lived. Family members including his daughter Jen and his brothers Tom and Steve are to perform. Another concert is scheduled for Monday night at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow -- the same place Harry Chapin was to play the night of July 16, 1981.

That day around 12:30 p.m. he was heading down the Long Island Expressway in Jericho when his Volkswagen Rabbit apparently malfunctioned and slowed to about 15 mph. He shifted from the left lane to the center, where a trucker smashed into him.

His death shocked his fans in the worlds of music and social activism.

"Long Island has lost perhaps its greatest ambassador and our nation has lost a real energy, an energy resembling that of our founding fathers," George Dempster, acting commissioner of the State Commerce Department and Chapin's colleague on several boards, said at the time.

Jen Chapin, who was 10 at the time of the fatal crash, recalled that her father's death stunned her, but that the family drew comfort from his wide network of friends. He was such a force that his work and his vision have remained strong for her and many others three decades later.

"He's never really gone away," said Jen Chapin, 40, an urban folk musician who lives in Brooklyn. "It's kind of a constant state of remembering, of taking the legacy forward."

Paule T. Pachter, executive director of LI Cares, added, "The music and the message didn't die with the man."

Chapin's brother Tom said that when he played "Cat's in the Cradle" at a concert in Wisconsin this week "the place just went nuts." Tom Chapin recalled that the Chapin brothers, including Steve, formed a band in the late 1950s when Harry was 14 and Tom was 12. They were inspired by a concert recording Pete Seeger, from when his group The Weavers had a comeback performance at Carnegie Hall several years after being blacklisted during the McCarthy era.

"They blew our minds," Tom Chapin said, adding that Seeger's focus on "the common man, the working man" inspired the brothers.