Paul Stookey

Noel Paul Stookey (born December 30, 1937) is an American singer-songwriter and activist who is known for being a member of the 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary along with Peter Yarrow and Mary Travers. Following the deaths of Travers in 2009 and Yarrow in 2025, Stookey is the sole surviving member of the group. He continues to work as a solo artist and an activist.

Stookey was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His family moved to Birmingham, Michigan, when he was 12 years old, and he graduated from Birmingham High School (now Seaholm High School) in 1955.

Stookey attended Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing, Michigan but did not graduate. While attending MSU, he joined Delta Upsilon fraternity. Though he credits a deep spiritual core for his work, Stookey "dispelled reports that he was born a Buddhist, saying his mother was a Roman Catholic and his dad was an ex-Mormon" and recalling the family's "eclectic attendance at church. I had no real spiritual sense until I was 30."

Stookey married Elizabeth "Betty" Bannard in 1963 and they have three daughters. After raising their family in Blue Hill, Maine, the couple lived for several years in Massachusetts while Betty served as the Northfield Mount Hermon School chaplain and they returned to Maine in 2005. Stookey continued recording his solo albums in his private studio—a converted four-story henhouse—on his Maine property. This studio, known as "The Henhouse," was also the origin point of the first broadcasts of WERU upon that station's inception in 1988.

Performing as Paul in the Peter, Paul and Mary trio, he participated in one of the best-known ensembles of the 1960s phase of the American folk music revival, and included some of his solo songs and extended monologs in their performances and recordings. In May 1963, Stookey discussed the evolution of his music and the formation of Peter, Paul and Mary on Folk Music Worldwide, an international short-wave radio program in New York City.

One of Stookey's songs, "Norman Normal", which appeared on The Peter, Paul and Mary Album (1966), inspired a Warner Bros. animated cartoon also titled Norman Normal (1968). Stookey co-wrote the story for the cartoon and voiced several of the characters.

In addition to his recordings with the trio, he released a number of solo works, several albums with the ensemble Bodyworks, and some anthologies. He was an important artist in the young Jesus music movement, which later bloomed into the Christian music industry, although his generally liberal political views distinguish him from many such artists.

Stookey was awarded the Kate Wolf Memorial Award by the World Folk Music Association in 2000.