Mimi Farina Dead of Cancer Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit MIMI FARINA, FOUNDER OF BREAD & ROSES, DEAD OF CANCER [More information is available at www.breadandroses.com, where memorial messages may also be left. -- NY Transfer] (7/19/01, 7 p.m. ET) -- Folk singer and social activist Mimi Farina died at her home in Marin County, California, on Wednesday (July 18) at the age of 56, following a two-year battle with neuroendocrine cancer. Farina and her sister singer Joan Baez were considered folk-music royalty in the '60s. Farina recorded several hits as a solo artist and with husband, singer-songwriter and novelist Richard Farina, whom she married in 1963. Richard Farina was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1966. Mimi Farina devoted most of her time to charitable work. In 1974, she founded the San Francisco-based Bread & Roses, a charity organization devoted to putting on musical concerts in hospitals, mental institutions, and prisons. Several of the benefit concerts, featuring some of the biggest names in folk and pop music, were recorded and later released. At the time of her passing, Farina was surrounded by friends and family, including Baez, who said of her younger sister, "Mimi filled empty souls with hope and song. She reminded prisoners that they were human beings with names and not just numbers. The devastation I feel at losing her is unbearable." Singer-songwriter Pete Seeger recalled a highlight of Mimi Farina's career as a performer: "[It was] an extraordinary summer day in 1965 at Newport, when she and Richard had the audience of 6,000 on their feet in the midst of a downpour. I was backstage. Mimi and Richard and their guitar and dulcimer were protected, but the people were drenched, tearing off their shirts and dancing, totally enthralled by the music." A public ceremony honoring Farina is scheduled for August 7 at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral. -- Sue Falco, New York (www.launch.com) * * * SAN FRANCISCO, July 19 (Reuters) -- Singer and social activist Mimi Farina, who with her sister and fellow singer Joan Baez was a member of "folk royalty" in the 1960s but left behind a music career to devote herself to charitable work, died of cancer on Wednesday at her home in Marin County, California. She was 56. Farina recorded several hits in the 1960s both as a solo artist and with her husband, Richard Farina, who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1966. She was best known in the San Francisco area for founding Bread & Roses, a nonprofit organization launched in 1974 that brought live music and top performers to people in jails, psychiatric wards and drug rehabilitation centers. "Mimi filled empty souls with hope and song. She reminded prisoners that they were human beings with names and not just numbers," Baez said in a statement released to the Bay City News Service. "The devastation I feel at losing her is unbearable." Farina leaves behind her parents, Albert Baez and Joan Baez Sr., as well as her two sisters Joan and Pauline, two nephews, a niece and her partner, reporter Paul Liberatore. A public ceremony honoring Farina at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco is scheduled for Aug. 7. * * * San Francisco, July 19 (KPIX)--Cancer has taken the life of a Bay Area folk singer and activist. Mimi Farina died Wednesday, July 18, in her Mill Valley home from complications of lung cancer. She was 56. Family and friends, including her sister Joan Baez, were with her. Farina founded "Bread and Roses," an organization that brings free live performances to people isolated in Bay Area institutions, like hospitals, prisons and senior centers. The story of Farina's life is told in a new bestseller, "Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina." Richard Farina, Mimi's husband, was killed in a 1966 motorcycle accident. They recorded folk albums together before he died. -- By KPIX ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytfem-07.20.01-12:58:55-16108