Inside the
Winter Issue:

Home Page

Growing Up
With Hunger

Fan Fare:
Randy Rossilli

Fan Fare:
SpoonWalk

Tulane, Too Soon

Journal Provides Eye Into
Food Banks’ Efforts in
Katrina’s Wake

Chapin Christmas CD
Is a Hit Throughout
The Seasons

“Doing Something”

Goat Tales

Chapin Family Marks
WHY’s 30th Anniversary
With Benefit Concerts
in New York City

Harry Chapin Celebration
Concert Review

Time to Remember

Letter to the Editor:
Elizabeth Paquette

Letter to the Editor:
Greg McCaig

Circle! Calendar

Time to Remember

by Thom Wolke

Early December is a funny time of year for most, often described as the waiting period for ‘Round 2’ of the year-end holidays. Over the years, it’s been made worse by the commercialism and gift-shopping craze created by businesses to the point where there are now winter holiday decorations in stores in October, even in England.

Now, December 7th holds a powerful place in a lot of people’s lives, especially the generation before me. It was yesterday’s 9/11 battle cry.

But December 7th also holds a special place in my heart, and represents something finer during this ‘waiting’ period. For December 7th, 1942, precisely one year after the attack on Pearl Harbor, was the day one of my favorite performers and lasting influences on my life, was born.

Harry Chapin considered himself a “third-rate Folk Singer”, but he was also an incredible driving force of a Humanitarian which can not be overemphasized. He was driven to uncover the truth and justice for everyone, not just the elite of society. He practically single-handedly created the Presidential Commission on Hunger under Jimmy Carter, who wouldn’t stop there even after Carter agreed to its creation to Harry sitting across the table. Like a Pit-Bull unwilling to let go, Harry told Carter he wanted him not to just create the Commission, he wanted the President committed to the cause.

I was very fortunate to have a few encounters with Harry Chapin’s life and family, and take away some of the ideals of his life that I try to uphold to this day.

I first got to actually speak to him at a Pro-Celebrity tennis tournament, and later got his autograph on albums as well as on the program book from that tournament, and also get his “Cat’s In the Cradle” son Josh’s very first autograph (which I later sent to Harry’s widow).

I later went on to become his brother, Tom Chapin’s booking agent in the mid-80s, including helping shepherd him into the world of Children’s Music. I was Tom’s photographer at the Carnegie Hall tribute to Harry and his posthumous receipt of the Congressional Gold Medal from Senator Leahy. And to this day I’m involved in fundraising efforts for various progressive causes. Harry definitely touched me.

Thom Wolke at the gates to Strawberry Fields.

Now every year, another early December date dominates the headlines. December 8th, the day John Lennon was murdered in front of his wife. As the media will no doubt blare, this year will be twenty-five years since that fateful day.

And once again, like so many others, I also have connections to this man, now often portrayed as almost Saint-like.

I walked by the Dakota apartment John shared with Yoko and their five year-old son Sean that fateful afternoon, returning to the Port Authority bus terminal from the Museum of Natural History where I went to see a talk by Dr. Roger Payne (of Humpback Whale recording fame). I have no significant memory other than to have noticed a small gathering of fans who always waited outside the entrance hoping to catch a glimpse of their ‘working class hero’. My strongest memory of that day was that I bought John’s new album “Double Fantasy” when I returned home to New Jersey. Later that night, John Lennon was dead.

Now I’m the North American representative (for lack of a better word) for the “Quarrymen”, Lennon’s original band mates who eventually morphed into the greatest Rock & Roll band of all time.

In fact I was just led around Liverpool two months ago by a couple of the band mates who teased me with that famous Liverpool wit we all came to know and love. Drummer Colin Hanton took particular zeal in poking fun of our ‘Uber-Tourist’ trip around town with quips like, “Rod (Davis), why are we driving all over, just tell him that field over there is ‘Strawberry Fields’, and let’s go get a pint”, or “Didn’t he see the film ? Just tell him John, Paul, and George all lived right next-door to one another.”

Lennon was re-emerging from a self-imposed ‘exile’ with his new album. Then he was cut down by Mark David Chapman. He was taking the necessary steps to figure out if he could take back control of his life, and to do it on his own terms when things were altered forever.

I guess we all have our own ‘Chapman’s’ in life, people or events that forever alter our direction. Not all of these people or events are quite as final as Lennon’s, but even that senseless act has forever changed and altered the lives of everyone who came to know of John Winston Lennon, whether they be as close as John’s family and friends, or those fans who gathered daily in front of the Dakota.

When I brought the Quarrymen to America for the first time ever in 1998, we had the opportunity before their New York City show to wander uptown to the Dakota and across the street in Central Park to an area dedicated as “Strawberry Fields”. There’s a large plaque there embedded in the pathway, a simple disc that reads, “Imagine”.

Left to right, Thom Wolke, Len Garry (tea-chest bass player), Colin Hanton (drums), and Rod Davis (banjo) of the original Quarrymen. Photo was taken in the “Beatles Story Museum” in Liverpool on a reproduction of the famed Cavern Club stage.

Quarryman, Pete Shotton, Lennon’s life-long best friend wanted to visit privately with Yoko. We waited in the park, sitting on a bench near the plaque. It was a beautiful summer day with lots of folks strolling the paths. The rest of the Quarrymen and I talked about their boyhood memories and now of Lennon’s legacy.

I took note of a young woman lining up a perfect ‘postcard photo’ of the disc in the sidewalk. I delighted in the irony of the fact that there I was, sitting with Lennon’s best mates on a bench obviously in the background of her photo.

Before she could wander off, I approached her and told her of this irony. Amazingly, this 20 year-old knew who the Quarrymen were! She was a huge fan of Lennon. Even more incredible, this woman, with a thick German accent, told me that she flew here on her vacation specifically to take that photo of the plaque and absorb things in “Strawberry Fields” and around the Dakota.

She took a couple more photos of and with the lads, and they invited her to the show that night at the Bottom Line. She never showed up, but I’ll bet her life, someone only a couple years old when Chapman altered things, was changed in some way forever.

Both Harry Chapin and John Lennon, now bound by this coincidence of birth and death dates, shared the ideals of the goodness of mankind, and each in their own way struggled to find that in themselves and in the ways they tried to help others.

My hope is that this is what people can ponder in these ‘waiting’ times leading up to our annual year-end holidays with family and friends.

Thom Wolke was the former Executive Director of the Claremont Opera House and now works as a manager for artists like Blueman Guy Davis.

Watch for the Next Issue of Circle! on March 7