“Think one man can’t make a difference? Just look at the life of one Avon Old Farms graduate. Pete Seeger has changed millions of lives with his music and his activism. He has done it without compromising his values and without fear for his own reputation or safety; he has done it with boundless optimism and the conviction that there is nothing the people cannot accomplish, and he has done it by bringing people together, recognizing the value in each of us and in all of us, and by inspiring us with his commitment, his vision, and his song.” –Art Custer
The following interview, about his student days at Avon Old Farms, was excerpted from a conversation Pete Seeger had with Avon Archivist Carol Ketcham when he and his wife, Toshi, visited the campus in 2006. AVONIAN: How did your parents come to pick this school, a brand new, very progressive school, for you?
My parents were split, and the three sons had to go somewhere. The oldest son got a scholarship to Loomis. And the next oldest son, with scholarship help, went to Kent…[My parents] knew a family whose son went to Avon, and they scraped up enough money to get me here, at least the first few months. But they ran out of cash, so they hoped I would get a scholarship. And I did eventually, as you know—an unusual kind of scholarship. SEEGER:
AVONIAN: One of the things that encouraged the school to give you that scholarship was the wonderful newsletter that you began.
Yes. I first tried to get a little allowance money by shining shoes, but at a nickel a pair, it was slow going. And I found that I could use the school mimeograph machine and pay for the paper and pay for the wax stencils, and somewhere I got a typewriter. I gathered the news with pencil and paper, typed up the little articles, and published a three-page Avon weekly newsletter. It came out every Tuesday right on time for three years. And that was why I was allowed to stay at the school, because Mrs. Riddle liked the gossip that I put in my newspaper, where all she got were formal reports from the Provost.
SEEGER:
AVONIAN: What about the faculty? Did they get copies of your newspaper, too? SEEGER:
If they paid for them.
AVONIAN: Was there a person, an Avon faculty member or a student, who was particularly encouraging to you in terms of developing your skills as a musician or as a writer?
I attempted to write for my English teacher, Harold Louis Cook. And I liked music…I was in the glee club. Enjoyed singing. Tried to join the jazz band, but I wasn’t very good. Painted pictures in Mr. Child’s art class. Tried to do a little sculpture. But I confess it was the 3,000 acres of woods that I really loved. I tracked animals there. I slept overnight in my teepee without anybody knowing it, because I could go there after lights were out and walk a half mile with a flashlight. And I could cook my own breakfast in the teepee.
SEEGER:
“In the ’60s, Pete decided to launch a campaign to clean up the Hudson River. Using the sloop Clearwater as his platform, he has succeeded to a remarkable degree—mostly by calling attention to the problem and by inspiring a grassroots movement in response. Along the way, they have had to get past some formidable obstacles—General Electric, for example, was dumping PCB’s into the river—but Pete has always believed in the power of the people—and of song. “Think one man can’t make a difference? Just look at the life of one Avon Old Farms graduate. Pete Seeger has changed millions of lives with his music and his activism. He has done it without compromising his values and without fear for his own reputation or safety; he has done it with boundless optimism and the conviction that there is nothing the people cannot accomplish, and he has done it by bringing people together, recognizing the value in each of us and in all of us, and by inspiring us with his commitment, his vision, and his song.”
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Spring 2014 The Avonian
TOSHI SEEGER: That leads right to when he married me, and by the time we’d had two children, he decided that we were going to move out to the wilderness. SEEGER: Summers, I spent all my vacations up at my grandparents’ house in the country. I really thought cities were a big mistake. They’re too noisy, and too dirty, too crowded, and unhealthy. And now I think that if the human race survives, the cities will teach us some of our most important lessons. Mainly how to live with somebody, next to you or on the next block, who speaks a different language and has a different name for God. In Queens, there’s a newspaper store that sells newspapers in 182 languages. Can you imagine it? AVONIAN: Amazing. So you spent a lot of time in Avon’s woods; isn’t it interesting that you had the time to do that as a student here. You went