Bob Blue, 57; former teacher wrote songs, essays, stories

Songs, stories, essays, poems -- Bob Blue moved among them effortlessly, even as illness slowly curtailed his mobility.

''He knew that was the part of himself that would live on, no matter what," said a daughter, Lara Shepard-Blue. ''He wanted people to draw inspiration from and to think about what he had to say, and they have. Hundreds of people who for years have been spreading his music will continue to do so. He would like that."

Mr. Blue, who wrote more than 200 songs and penned thousands of essays and stories, had taught elementary school in Wellesley for 20 years. He died at home of complications from multiple sclerosis on March 17 in Amherst, where he had moved in the 1990s when he was no longer able to teach full time.

With characteristic humor, Mr. Blue, who was 57, glibly dismissed his illness in a 1999 interview with The Boston Globe.

''I want to go on the record as being against it," he said of multiple sclerosis, a degenerative nerve and muscle disease.

Much of Mr. Blue's musical work, which he recorded, was aimed at children and ranged from musicals and tunes about something as simple as a spring day to songs about more serious issues, such as disappointment, divorce, or his own illness.

As a writer, he published collections of essays in four volumes of ''Parents, Teachers, Children: Thoughts from Someone Who's Been All Three . . . and Remembers." He wrote about his experiences with MS in ''After Humpty Dumpty's Fall," and most recently completed ''Tales from Blueville," a series of stories in verse inspired by Theodor Geisel's Dr. Seuss books.

Mr. Blue grew up on Long Island in Huntington, N.Y. He graduated from Beloit College in Wisconsin, taught high school briefly in that state, and took a job teaching elementary school in Wellesley in the early 1970s. A gifted pianist who could pick out a tune after hearing it once, Mr. Blue wove music into his daily lessons.

''He taught a lot with songs -- he taught grammar and math," said Phil Hoose of Portland, Maine, with whom Mr. Blue and several others founded the Children's Music Network, which grew into a national organization. ''He was so inventive and so well-attuned to how a song could trigger learning in a person."

He set some lyrics to the music of others. ''Their Way," which pokes fun of conformity, was modeled on Frank Sinatra's rendition of ''My Way." That song was performed by other musicians on ''A Prairie Home Companion." Another composition, ''The Ballad of Erica Levine," was performed by Peter, Paul, and Mary.

''He would get an inspiration and start writing the lyrics, and by the time he was done writing the lyrics, he would find that a tune had already written itself," said his daughter, who lives in Amherst. ''And sometimes the tunes were actually Mozart or Scott Joplin. He borrowed some tunes, too."

The first symptoms of multiple sclerosis began to appear in 1978, when Mr. Blue was 30. Though he had a progressive case, he worked another 15 years before taking a disability pension and moving to Amherst.

''He wrote a lot about what it was like for him to come to terms with the different stages he went through," his daughter said.

Some observations ended up in a column he wrote for the Wellesley Townsman.

In Amherst, he stayed involved as an educator and adopted a first-grade class at Fort River Elementary School that he intended to follow through high school. That class graduates this spring. ''He had an unusual way of connecting with kids who were having a hard time, and was very talented at writing songs from a child's point of view," said Anne Louise White, a music teacher at Fort River.

Mr. Blue, she said, also used his sense of humor to show children that someone with a disability need not be shut away: ''He would bring in a new wheelchair and show how he could tip back and do a wheelie."

Ben Goldberg, a friend from Florence who is a musician and carpenter, helped Mr. Blue modify his Amherst condo as he used first a cane, then a scooter, then a wheelchair to get around. ''I slowly discovered what an incredibly wide and diverse and marvelous world he lived in, and how he was able to approach his life with such courage and humility, modesty and fearlessness," Goldberg said.

Mr. Blue, who was married and divorced twice, turned his living room into a performance venue where musicians would play.

''When he couldn't perform anymore, he listened to music," his daughter said. ''He felt so blessed."

And he kept writing -- at all hours. When he could no longer type with both hands, he would tap out an essay with a single finger. When that wasn't possible, he'd dictate to his healthcare assistant.

''He had a real compelling need to write," his daughter said. ''He had to have a computer available 24 hours a day in case he woke up in the middle of the night with a thought he needed to get down."

Ann B. Morse, who met Mr. Blue in college, was sitting outside her home in Nashville earlier this week, singing ''This Kind of Day" -- a song of his that extolled the beauty of spring.

''Somebody said that Bob is no longer among us, but he's with us, and he's with us through his songs," she said.

In addition to his daughter Lara, Mr. Blue leaves another daughter, Katy, Rogers of Crestview, Fla.; his mother, Sylvia, of Binghamton, N.Y.; two brothers, Howard of Queens, N.Y., and Richard of Clearwater, Fla.; and a sister, Susan, of Binghamton.

A memorial service will be held May 7. The place and time will be posted on Mr. Blue's website, www.bobblue.org.