Peter Yarrow, founding member of Peter, Paul and Mary, dies at 86

Peter Yarrow, the singer-songwriter, activist and founding member of the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, died Tuesday, his representative confirms. He was 86.

Yarrow died at his home in New York City after a four-year battle with bladder cancer, his publicist Ken Sunshine told USA TODAY.

"Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life," Yarrow's daughter Bethany said in a statement provided by Sunshine. "The world knows Peter Yarrow the iconic folk activist, but the human being behind the legend is every bit as generous, creative, passionate, playful, and wise as his lyrics suggest."

A memorial service will be announced at a later date, Sunshine confirmed.

Alongside Paul Stookey and Mary Travers, Yarrow formed and contributed compositions to Peter, Paul and Mary. The folk music revival of the 1960s catapulted the group into stardom, as the trio found success with original songs like "Puff, the Magic Dragon" and "Norman Normal" written by Yarrow and Stookey, as well as Bob Dylan classics such as "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and "Blowin' in the Wind."

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Stookey, the group's last surviving member, remembered Yarrow's impact and "guidance" through music and life.

"Being an only child, growing up without siblings may have afforded me the full attention of my parents, but with the formation of Peter, Paul and Mary, I suddenly had a brother named Peter Yarrow," Stookey said in a statement Tuesday. "He was best man at my wedding and I at his. He was a loving 'uncle' to my three daughters. And, while his comfort in the city and my love of the country tended to keep us apart geographically, our different perspectives were celebrated often in our friendship and our music."

Though five months older than Yarrow, Stookey says his bandmate "became my creative, irrepressible, spontaneous and musical younger brother − yet at the same time, I grew to be grateful for, and to love, the mature-beyond-his-years wisdom and inspiring guidance he shared with me like an older brother. Politically astute and emotionally vulnerable, perhaps Peter was both of the brothers I never had … and I shall deeply miss both of him."

Peter, Paul and Mary disbanded in 1970 to pursue solo ventures, though they reunited throughout the '80s, '90s and 2000s until Travers' death in 2009.

The trio split after Yarrow was accused in 1969 of sexual misconduct involving a 14-year-old girl. Yarrow pleaded guilty and served three months in prison, admitting to taking "immoral and indecent liberties" with the girl, Barbara Winter, who had come to his dressing room at a hotel seeking an autograph.

"It happened when I was just an innocent child," Winter told The Washington Post in an interview published in 2021. "I didn't know anything. I was just a little girl that liked to play with her friends."

Yarrow was pardoned for the offense in 1981 by President Jimmy Carter, whose casket arrived in Washington the same day as Yarrow's death.

In a separate incident, Yarrow was accused in a 2021 lawsuit of raping a teenage girl in a hotel room in 1969, according to The Washington Post and the New York Post.

How Peter, Paul and Mary was formed

Born in Manhattan to parents who immigrated from the Ukraine, Yarrow first showed an aptitude toward physics, which he majored in at Cornell University before switching and earning a bachelor's degree in psychology.

Yarrow’s music career began during his time at Cornell, where he engaged in a folk literature course that required him to play guitar and sing.

His interest in music – particularly the burgeoning folk era – expanded as Yarrow played clubs in New York City and at the esteemed Newport Folk Festival. A fateful encounter with music impresario Albert Grossman led to the creation of Peter, Paul and Mary after the pair discussed creating a group that would appeal to fans of the Kingston Trio.

Through Grossman – who became Yarrow’s manager and soon afterward, Bob Dylan’s – the young folkie met the well-regarded Travers, who, as an introvert, was reluctant about performing, but enjoyed the way her and Yarrow’s vocals blended. The pair recruited Noel Stookey, a friend of Travers’ schooled in folk music and stand-up comedy, who adopted his middle name, Paul, to form the catchier moniker of Peter, Paul and Mary.

The trio landed quick success with their eponymous debut album released in 1962. Buoyed by singles “If I Had a Hammer” and “Lemon Tree,” the album hit No. 1 on the Billboard album chart – a rare achievement for a folk recording – and stayed there for more than a month.

Peter Yarrow wanted to 'build something better' through folk music

Between their early '60s breakout and 2004 finale with “In These Times,” Peter, Paul and Mary released a dozen albums and remained chart mainstays.

“Puff, the Magic Dragon” became a signature song in 1963 thanks to its crossover appeal on the pop, easy listening and R&B charts and easy assimilation as a children's singalong.

As the group progressed, Yarrow and his musical comrades earned plaudits for their low-key vibe and vocally endearing covers of songs from Woody Guthrie (“This Land Is Your Land”), Dylan (“Blowin’ in the Wind”) and John Denver. The trio took his “Leaving on a Jet Plane” to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969 – their only hit to ascend to the top. (Denver’s version failed to chart.)

Throughout his life, Yarrow remained true to his beliefs that music should be used as not just a form of protest but of healing, saying in a 2017 interview for his anti-bullying program Operation Respect, “No song that Peter, Paul, and Mary ever sang – and this is true of all folk music – was simply a protest against something. It was always, also, the intention of those songs to build something wonderful, better, more humane, more equitable. That’s folk music.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Peter Yarrow dead: Peter, Paul and Mary singer dies of bladder cancer