When Harry died it sent shock waves through the people of Flint because we kind of adopted him.” Harry came for five years, every year - even when Flint was down and out - sometimes doing two to five concerts a year. “He said, ‘sure,’ I’ll do it,” Moore told a crowd at the Huntington, N.Y., Book Review bookstore in October, 2011, some 30 years after Chapin’s death, “and two months later he came to Flint to do a benefit concert for us. He knew that Harry always carried a cherished pocket watch given to him by Michael Moore, the documentary filmmaker, before Moore made any films or was known beyond Flint, Michigan.Īs a pushy 22-year old, Moore had thrust himself into Harry’s face backstage at intermission of a 1976 Grand Rapids, Michigan concert, begging Chapin to do a benefit for his fledgling, muckraking publication, the Flint Voice. Tom Chapin felt as if he had been punched in the stomach, and that the world stopped. To a great American, Harry Chapin,” the cop said. “What does it say, “ Tom asked, fearful that he already knew. “We have a body here, and the only way we can identify it is by this pocket watch we found on him with a name inscribed on it,” the Nassau County Cop said. and his wallet was incinerated, destroying all of the victim’s ID. Someone had died in a terrible car accident on the L.I.E.
“What’s your relation to the deceased?” the police office asked. When Tom Chapin, the younger brother closest in age to Harry, got a call on that July day in 1981, from the Nassau County, NY, cop who recovered Harry’s charred body near the Jericho exit of the busy Long Island Expressway (Interstate 495), he knew something wasn’t right. The work of those anti-poverty organizations, and the extraordinary dedication of the Chapin family has carried forward Harry’s hope, and given his social justice work a life that is now longer than the time on earth enjoyed by the singer/songwriter.) The organizations which Harry Chapin founded, from WHYHunger to Harry Chapin Food Banks across the nation, continue to serve those most in need, four decades after Chapin’s death. Chapin– inspired by his older brother James the great anti-poverty champion and author of The Other America Michael Harrington Harry’s spouse & partner Sandy Chapin and his friend and former Catholic priest Bill Ayres, who followed the progressive Catholic Worker teachings of Harry’s great aunt, Dorothy Day-devoted the last decade of his life to fighting hunger and reducing poverty. ( It’s fitting that the largest tax credit in US History-a monthly payment for children (), which will lift one-half of America’s children out of poverty-is being implemented this week, which also marks the 40 th Anniversary of Harry Chapin’s death. Harry Chapin: Hope, and Life, After Death
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