Remembering Pete Seeger aboard the Clearwater

By Maura Niemisto
Sun contributor

Empire native Maura Niemisto works aboard the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, and shared this poignant memory of American folk and activist icon Pete Seeger, who passed away this week. Pete’s wife Toshi died in July 2013.

Whenever we went out for a sail we would have a moment of silence with everyone on board, and would break it with a song. During Toshi’s memorial several crew members broke silence with a plethora of string instruments. It was about four girls singing a four part harmony version of Mingulay.

Pete was sitting on the generator box facing the opposite direction. It was very cold and windy so with his down hood on he didn’t hear the girls for the first half of their performance. Finally he realized what was going on and turned around toward the music. He seemed to be making for the companionway down to the main cabin. He opened the hatch and started down the ladder backward, as if it was stairs.

The captain started silently signaling violently to Tom, our engineer to jump down the escape hatch to the main cabin and get to the bottom of the ladder, as this is probably the number one place people get hurt on the boat. Everybody was silently wide eyed, worried for an inevitable accident. But Pete stopped and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the hatch lid so that he was positioned only a few feet in front of the singing girls, seated on the deck above the main cabin.

We realized what Pete was up to and the wide eyed looks were then taken on by the honored performers. We kept Tom down at the bottom of the ladder just in case. I’m sure Pete wasn’t even aware of the ordeal. However, it gave us a little glimpse into his spirit, even on a sad day, and it definitely made the day of those girls singing. I’m sure that was the first thing they thought of on Tuesday when they heard of Pete passing.