Continuing On

Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, photo montage from their performance at the Garden State Arts Center, Holmdel, NJ, probably August 9, 1969. Photos Copyright ©1969 Maurice Lubetkin.
Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, photo montage from their performance at the Garden State Arts Center, Holmdel, NJ, probably August 9, 1969. Photos Copyright ©1969 Maurice Lubetkin.

“I can’t leave right now,” a newly become widower said to me after I officiated at the funeral of his wife and the graveside service was concluded. I responded, “It took you 40 years to get here, you can take your time leaving.”  I was referring to the length of their marriage that was shared with me in a family meeting before designing the service and the hesped, or eulogy. 

How to continue on when a person who had been a major part of your life for so long is suddenly gone is a life changing question we face. How do you continue on when your name has always been a part of a name joined with another? There are several ways this uncoupling can occur. Here we speak of death. Here we speak of the ultimate uncoupling that yearns to be denied, where tears coat the journey to transform the relationship. You had always been seen as more than one. What now?

I thought about that when I was reading Rabbi Address’ January 13 commentary “The Times Have Changed … But The Music Lingers On.” Rabbi Address was reflecting on the death of Peter Yarrow (Z”L) on January 7, 2025, just a week earlier.

Writing in The Forward, Benjamin Ivry commented, “The American Jewish singer songwriter Peter Yarrow, who died Tuesday at age 86, exemplified the paradoxes of assimilating in the world of pop music. Although he was never bar mitzvahed, following a secular upbringing, he wrote, and performed with his group ‘Peter, Paul, and Mary’ the popular Hanukkah song ‘Light One Candle’ …”

Yarrow also had to confront continuing on. Peter, Paul, and Mary were a trio, an inseparable trio we would like to say. However, “inseparable” comes with a large BUT. Mary Travers, the Mary of the group, died first, on September 16, 2009. Was that the end of the trio? How inseparable was the trio? 

My first degree is in statistics. The language of statistics includes constants and variables. Constants and variables are always separate categories in math. Real Life is a form of applied math and so much more. In Real Life, I have learned, by merging statistics with my chaplaincy specialty in end-of-life care, our eyes are opened to the continuing transformation of constants into variables. Families receiving the bad and sad news of a terminal diagnosis want a constant in the prognosis, “How long will she / he live?”The physician cannot commit. G-d, the patient, and the doctor are all sprinting on the same track, at the same time, but in different lanes and, inevitably, at different speeds.

In 1970, Peter, Paul, and Mary broke up, but reunited in 1972, 1978, and 1981. 

Came September 16, 2009, Mary Travers was no more. Her death was attributed to complications from chemotherapy. What becomes of the trio?  Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey toured as a duet, and separately. Whether it was one of them performing or both of them performing, it was inevitable to associate the trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary, with the soloist or duet that was performing.

When Peter Yarrow died in January, (Noel) Paul Stookey, the Paul of the trio, reflected on Peter, “I suddenly had a brother named Peter Yarrow. He was the best man at my wedding and I at his….. I grew to be grateful for, and to love, the mature-beyond-his-years wisdom and inspiring guidance … I shall deeply miss him.”

Peter and Paul continued on without Mary, but the spirit and memory of Mary was surely always there. At each concert it would be expected to think of Peter, or Paul, or Peter and Paul as from “Peter, Paul, and Mary.”

On the first Sunday in 2025, CBS Sunday Morning reflected, as it always does on the first Sunday in the year, on people who touched so many of our lives through in-person and media, but whose lives ended as we knew them in 2024, perhaps, we pray, to olam ha-bah, an everlasting world to come. One vocalist who had died in 2024 was Sidney Liebowitz, more widely known as vocalist Steve Lawrence. Like Al Jolson and Irving Berlin, Sidney Liebowitz was the son of a cantor. His father was Hazzan Max Liebowitz. Hazzan Max’s Shul was Beth Sholom Tomchei Harav (“supporters of the rabbi”) on Alabama Avenue in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn.

Hazzan Max had a choir in his shul. For the choir, the Hazzan matched each boy in the choir with a man in the choir to serve as a mentor. Within that model, Hazzan Max asked my father, Mosheh ben DovBer haCohen (Morris Pitegoff, of blessed memory), to mentor his own son, Sidney Liebowitz, the future Steve Lawrence. I remember that the first time I heard the words Ashkenaz and Sephardic were the adults whispering that Sidney (an Ashkenaz Jew) was dating a Sephardic Jew from the Bronx named Eydie. 

The couple toured as Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, a famous vocalist duo of popular songs. Eydie Gorme had to retire from touring in 2010 for medical reasons. Could Steve continue performing without Steve and Eydie?  Steve Lawrence toured on his own, the next nine years. Surely, the audiences saw him as Steve snd Eydie, just as the audiences saw Peter Yarrow as through Peter, Paul, and Mary. Steve Lawrence toured until 2019, when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Eydie Gorme died in 2013. Steve Lawrence died on March 7, 2024. Zichronam livracha, may their memories be for blessings. 

Consistent with the bereavement theory of Continuing Bonds, Peter, Paul and Mary continued, even if it was Paul or Peter performing solo. Steve and Eydie continued, audiences thinking of the famous couple, when Steve performed on his own.

In 1945, Rodgers and Hammerstein opened “Carousel.” A major song to stand on its own from the musical is “You’ll never walk alone” The song is reprised at the end of the show as inspiration to the daughter of Billy Bigelow, as she is facing high school graduation without her father, who died during a botched robbery earlier in the show. 

Like Steve Lawrence and Peter Yarrow, we can continue on when we realize that we are not walking alone. 

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