Gary Rosen, musician who created children's classic 'Teddy Bear's Picnic'

Teddy bears -- some large, some small, some wearing sunglasses -- often made up half the crowd at Gary Rosen's concerts, one for each paying member of the audience. At the end of the performance, the bears and their owners would parade through the venue while he sang the children's classic "Teddy Bear's Picnic."

"You get so much glossy entertainment for children on television," he told the Globe eight years ago before bringing his Teddy Bear show to Newton. "But I think the Teddy Bear Jamboree brings it back to basics: It's you and your bear. Children always have special feelings about their own bear, and then they see everybody has a bear, and we're singing about bears, and their parents can tell them how they had bears, too."

During more than three decades as a performer, first as part of the duo Rosenshontz and then as a solo artist, Mr. Rosen gave audiences more than bears to share.

"Parents tell us that a tape of our music is the only music they and their children can agree to listen to for a long-distance drive," he said in 1990 while performing as part of Rosenshontz.

Mr. Rosen, who began playing classical guitar while growing up in Amherst and had been a beloved children's entertainer since the mid-1970s, died April 14 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at his Brattleboro home. He was 60 and had recorded two final CDs after being diagnosed nearly three years ago with Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS.

"He always used to say that ALS was his last big gig, and it was," said his wife, Mary Shea Rosen. "His spirit never left."

Born in New Haven, he moved with his family to Amherst, where his father was a physics professor at the University of Massachusetts. His mother moved into long-term care for treatment of multiple sclerosis when he was a boy. The eldest of three children, Mr. Rosen would visit her and perform classical guitar pieces he studied as a teenager.

He went to Oberlin College and in 1968 received a bachelor's in sociology. While there, he played in the band Ant Trip Ceremony, which released "24 Hours" -- an album that spawned an Internet cult following.

"About 15 years ago, we were cleaning out some things in the basement," his wife said. "He threw out an entire case of these albums from college and saved three -- I guess they were signed by all the guys in the group. A few years later, one of the guys contacted him. It had become a collectors' item in Europe."

After Oberlin, Mr. Rosen moved to New York City, where he was a music group therapist. Playing Ping-Pong one day he met Bill Shontz, with whom he formed Rosenshontz in 1974. Mr. Rosen described them as a cross between Simon & Garfunkel and the Smothers Brothers. A song they wrote was used on "Captain Kangaroo," and that TV exposure launched their career as children's entertainers.

The duo released six albums and performed across the country in venues ranging from the Colonial Theater to Carnegie Hall to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. They appeared in a Disney television special, on the late Robert J. Lurtsema's show "Morning Pro Musica," and played to thousands of fans on Boston Common.

"We call this family music because parents as well as kids like it," Mr. Rosen told the Globe in 1990.

In 1982 he met Mary Shea when each was visiting the Dominican Republic.

"He sang me a song under the stars," she said. "What can I say?"

They married in January 1985. She was from Bennington, on the other side of the Green Mountains from Brattleboro in southern Vermont, where Mr. Rosen had gone to live.

Their first child, Jamie Shea Rosen, died during infancy and the support they received from the community made helped them decide to stay in Brattleboro. Neighbors continued to support them during the past few years.

"This community has been incredible," his wife said. "To be very honest, it allowed me to keep Gary at home."

The couple's children -- Lela, 19, Penn, 17, and Eliza, 15 -- grew up singing on their father's projects. They toured last summer and will do so again this summer, performing his music.

"Our family life was very entwined with his performing life," his wife said. "It's been a very rich life, a very full life."

"I started singing duets with him onstage when I was 8, but I was on several CDs before that," Lela said. "Maybe I'd still be a musician, but definitely not with the amount of experience and professionalism and the real passion for it without my Dad."

Through the years, father and daughter traded roles on stage as she matured as a musician and ALS began to weaken Mr. Rosen.

At 8 she accompanied him at a children's concert in Fenway Park; at 17, during Boston's First Night celebration on Dec. 31, 2004, she took over the lead vocals.

At that performance, Mr. Rosen sang "The Best That I Can" with his son and his older daughter. The song, which has been used by the Special Olympics and Easter Seals because its lyrics are inspirational for children with disabilities, had an additional verse that night. Lela and Penn sang:

We've got a dad who's special to know
Although he's been sick, he's still doing his show
We say, 'Don't you feel sad that you've got to slow down?'

Then Mr. Rosen chimed in:

Oh no, not when I've got love all around
Don't go feeling sorry for me
I may be sick, but I can see
I'm gonna be the best that I can
Yes I am, yes I am

In addition to his wife and three children, Mr. Rosen leaves a brother, Robert of Amherst; and a sister, Ellen Tadd of Warwick.

A memorial concert was held this week.