In his short life, Harry Chapin was a singer, songwriter, activist and screenwriter
Where would Harry Chapin begin to tell the story? Probably, with just some undersell.
That he was a husband, father of five, a native New Yorker turned Long Islander, his home in Huntington Bay.
He'd take it from there. That he was a singer, a songwriter, a screenwriter, an activist, yes. But that he'd failed more times than he'd succeeded. That he was OK with that.
Forty years ago this week — July 16, 1981 — Chapin, nominee for an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, winner of a Peabody Award, all before he was 33, died in a fiery crash on the westbound Long Island Expressway, his 1975 Volkswagen Rabbit veering into the path of a tractor trailer near Exit 40 in Jericho. He was 38.
But though Chapin has been dead longer than he was alive, his legacy lives on in his music and philanthropic work.
You've probably heard some of his best-known songs: "Taxi," "W*O*L*D," "Cat's in the Cradle," the latter covered by Johnny Cash, Ricky Skaggs, and Judy Collins, and referenced in "Modern Family," "Always Sunny in Philadelphia," and "Blackish."
You've likely seen the result of his lifetime work, as well — from World Hunger Year and WhyHunger, cofounded with DJ Bill Ayres in 1975 to address food insecurity in America, to the Long Island Cares Harry Chapin Food Bank, which Chapin founded in 1980 to address the problem on the Island.
"He was a person who understood life was precious and that a life is a flicker in time and you have to maximize it to the greatest extent possible," son Jason Chapin said last week, adding: "He wanted to matter, he wanted to make a difference and to have an impact he knew you had to do something … I think he has a lasting legacy not just because of who he was, but also because of who he inspired."
Chapin documentary
In a new documentary, "Harry Chapin: When in Doubt, Do Something," singer Harry Belafonte describes Chapin as a pebble dropped into an ocean with the ripples reaching far and wide. The film, to be featured at a "docu-concert" July 19 at City Winery New York, explains how that relentless drive influenced not just a local and national movement, but world awareness in the fight against hunger.
It was Chapin's longtime manager, Ken Kragen, who became president of USA for Africa. It was Chapin, Sir Bob Geldorf and singer Kenny Rogers said, who became the influencer leading to causes like "We Are the World."
Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School graduate Rick Korn, who wrote and directed the Chapin documentary, recalled how Harry Chapin performed at the school in May 1974, arriving late, as he almost always did, then mixing his show with talk about issues dear to him.
'He was lecturing us in his own very musical way, about hunger, poverty, women's rights, ecology'
Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School graduate Rick Korn recalling how Harry Chapin performed at the school in May 1974
"He was lecturing us," Korn said of the moment, "in his own very musical way, about hunger, poverty, women's rights, ecology."
The late Newsday columnist Stan Isaacs once wrote of Chapin: "He is an unabashed idealist at a time of overwhelming cynicism."
Born Dec. 7, 1942, second of four children, Chapin grew up first in Greenwich Village and then Brooklyn Heights, following the divorce of his parents in 1950.
His father, Jim Chapin, was a legendary Big Band-era percussionist. His mother, Jeanne Elspeth, later Hart, was the daughter of renowned literary critic Kenneth Burke. His brothers Tom and Steve also became esteemed musicians. Chapin dropped out of Cornell University twice, and his first foray into celebrity came with a 1968 documentary about boxing. "Legendary Champions," nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary feature.
An early New York Times review noted Chapin performed "gorgeous ballads." Following a bidding war, Chapin signed a multimillion dollar deal with Elektra Records. His first album, "Heads & Tales," released in 1972, sold more than a million copies and included the Billboard hit "Taxi," about a cabbie whose fare turns out to be an old flame.
The album earned a 1973 Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, an award that went to America.
'Harry's a crowd'
Over the course of the next 10 albums, Chapin covered a range of subjects, from Sniper, about infamous Texas tower shooter Charles Whitman, to a washed-up radio disc jockey in "W*O*L*D." His blockbuster "Cat's in the Cradle" was written, in large part, by his wife Sandy, whom he'd met while tutoring her in music in 1966.
It was Sandy, Chapin would later say, who got him focused on his causes, most notably the issue of hunger and food insecurity.
In the film, Chapin's brothers recalled how unrelenting he could be, noting the family joke was: "Two's company, Harry's a crowd."
Chapin once had to be shushed in the White House — by President Jimmy Carter.
It was Carter who made Chapin an instrumental member of the new Presidential Commission on World Hunger in 1977, after Chapin persuaded a host of Washington politicians, including Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), to address the issue. As friends noted: When Chapin was told something was impossible his first reaction was, "OK, so how do we do it?"
'He saw hunger as the shame of America and he did something about it.'
Long Island Cares CEO Paule T. Pacht
"He saw hunger as the shame of America and he did something about it," Long Island Cares CEO Paule T. Pachter said. "He wanted people to come together and address the root causes of hunger, saying it's not enough to just feed people."
Today, the Long Island Cares Harry Chapin Food Bank distributes 10 million pounds of food and supplies annually to nearly 400 member agencies in Nassau and Suffolk.
And WhyHunger has grown to a national database of more than 34,000 food access organization, all while, according to its website, making "critical investments in transformative solutions to hunger led by Black, Indigenous, People of Color and other deeply impacted communities."
During his lifetime Chapin made millions and gave most of it to causes, performing more than a hundred concerts annually to raise money for any number of need-based organizations. That sometimes caused friction with his band members, who thought Chapin's never-say-no personality sometimes hurt his career.
Posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his work as a humanitarian, Chapin is buried in Huntington Rural Cemetery under a gravestone marked by a line from his 1978 song "I Wonder What Would Happen to This World" that reads: "Oh if a man tried / To take his time on earth / And prove before he died / What one man's life could be worth / I wonder what would happen to this world."
John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”
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