A Time To Die

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Pete Seeger inspired as many fine people to make a profession of the law dedicated to justice as any person in the history of the world.

“We shall overcome” was as vital to the civil rights movement as Martin Luther King himself. He didn’t sing it at us: time and again he invited us to sing it with him, so that it became not just his song, but ours, raising the voice of an entire generation.

When I would sing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” to my children sliding into sleep, it was Pete Seeger who put the pain in my voice as I sang of soldiers gone to graveyards, every one — that and the fact that these were my classmates, my friends, my brothers who didn’t come back from the war to sing songs to their children.

Mr. Seeger swore it was not too late, that there was yet a time for peace. I believe that, believe it though I have not seen it. Like every generation before me, I hope still to see it, in my children’s generation.