Lee, Sandy, and Caroline have been the three "legs" of the tripod that has supported the wonderful enterprise we all know as Folk-Legacy for all these years. Thanks to Lee, we all have access to Sandy's wonderful field recordings of Frank Proffit, Sara Cleveland, and so many others, as well as Sandy and Caroline's own recordings and those of their oldest son David, and artists like Art Thieme, Rick Fielding, Gordon Bok, and Ed Trickett, to name just a few. For 40 years, Sandy, Caroline, and Lee have been a great team -- a family, really. I join them in mourning Lee's passing.

I met Lee in 1971, the summer after I met Sandy and Caroline. He was a shy man who wasn't always comfortable with the bustle of performers and friends tramping through the busy house he shared with the Patons in those years. But he always had a smile, a hug, a glass of wine to share, an opinion on the latest news, and a tale to tell of the exploits of Ulysses (a.k.a. "Useless,")one of his gigantic and much-adored longhaired cats.

I talked with both Sandy and Caroline this morning. They are tentatively planning some sort of memorial for Lee in Connecticut on Mother's Day weekend. In the meantime, I'm sure they'd like to hear from friends. Kathy