How do we create a healthy and unified community? “Just getting to know people, period; through church, through organizations. It’s our community. And if we want it to be a good community, we have to do all we can, to make it a good community,” answers Peggy Shivers.

Shivers is, “… part of the fabric and the structure that holds this community together,” according to Mike Edmonds, senior vice president and chief of staff for Colorado College, interviewed in a Pikes Peak Library District video, “Peggy Shivers: Music Legend and Philanthropist.”

Peggy and Clarence Shivers created innumerable chances, event after opportunity, for connections between Colorado Springs residents. The couple organized, promoted, performed and created the Shivers Fund and Concert Series, which also provided for the purchase of books and other library materials. They did this all throughout times with unique challenges. They did it all with evidently a strong sense of connection to the community and with expectations of positive results.

The Shivers Celebration was a fiveday event, the origin of which Peggy describes.

“We asked our friends, since it came at Thanksgiving — if you’d like to come for the whole weekend then we’ll arrange celebrations. We lived in Spain so we had people coming

from Europe and the Islands and all over. So we had that event, and just had a good time. And that’s as far as we planned. They had such a good time they wanted to do it again and I said ‘Well, OK but you have to pay for it the next time,’” Peggy says wryly. And they did. The Celebration became a regular event on the community calendar.

It was a good thing for the community to be involved in, she says.

“They were all friends (that started the tradition). In general, they were all people that I knew and came in contact with since we’d been here … We met a lot of people through (Clarence’s) artwork and my singing.”

Brené Brown, psychologist and speaker, in an interview in Forbes, talks about how to achieve “true belonging,” as people. She says, “True belonging is not passive. It’s not the belonging that comes with just joining a group. It’s not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it’s safer. … We’re going to have to sign up and join, and take a seat at the table. We’re going to have to learn how to listen, have hard conversations, look for joy, share pain, and be more curious than defensive, all while seeking moments of togetherness.

She goes on, “As I started digging into this question with research participants there was very little ambiguity. It became clear that faceto-face connection is imperative in our true belonging practice.”

In her interview with the Pikes Peak Library District, Shivers recalled that when she and other young people in her church in Portland, Oregon, were put in charge of their own (music) department’s fundraising efforts, they rose to the occasion on their own and planned events to raise money. She says that experience helped her.

“I look back on that and I think, that was good training — for some of the things I’m doing now as a grown-up.”

The times that the Shivers lived through were a part of their story.

Edmonds talks some about the difficulties in the PPLD video. “Peggy and her husband, the late Clarence Shivers, absolutely experienced discrimination, racism and pain, all of that.” Edmonds

says in the video, “It’s clear … What’s more encouraging is that they used their pain — which was real — to help inform and shape their art. Which was and is simply beautiful.”

Brown also references the power for good of a feeling of immutable, positive connection to self and others. “Its counterintuitive, but our belief in the inextricable human connection is one of our most renewable sources of courage in the wilderness. I can stand up for what I believe is right when I know that regardless of the pushback and criticism, I’m connected to myself and others in a way that can’t be severed.”

Shivers talked about her community in the 1940s and 50s in Portland, Oregon, that appears provided just that sort of connection.

“Well you know (when) I grew up, my mother was an amazing woman. We just never thought about differences, we should have, but my mom was so involved with everybody and everything, and she and some other women started a club made up of women of different ethnic groups and whoever served lunch would serve food that was a part of their ethnic background. That’s the way I lead my life now. If you’re a nice person and I like you, then that’s what’s important.”

Edmonds summarizes his thoughts about Shivers’ connective power in Colorado Springs, “… Peggy has a beautiful spirit. And when I say she has a beautiful spirit … her belief in the beauty of people, the beauty of this community, the beauty of music and also in the beauty and power of change to make our community and society better… Peggy has always been an inspiration… She’s an inspiration not to get weary. And to keep on doing those things that are right… that collectively will just move our community forward.”