TLDR: Peggy Lennon, born April 8, 1941, was the second eldest of the Lennon Sisters and the group’s high soprano for 44 years on The Lawrence Welk Show and beyond.
In 1969, her father was murdered by a stalker who believed he was married to Peggy and that Bert was standing in his way.
She was 28 years old at the time, with a four-year-old daughter. She continued performing until 1999, married twice, had six children, and now lives quietly in the Northridge, California area at age 84.
The other sisters grieved the same loss. But Peggy grieved it differently.
Chet Young had not been obsessed with the Lennon Sisters. He had been obsessed with Peggy specifically. His delusion was that they were married and that her father was the obstacle preventing their life together. When he drove to the golf course on August 12, 1969, and shot Bert Lennon three times, he did it because of her.
That knowledge is not the same as guilt. But it is not nothing, either. Peggy Lennon carried it for the rest of her public life and has carried it in private for fifty-five years since.
She Grew Up as the High Soprano in a House Full of Singers
Margaret Anne Lennon was born on April 8, 1941, in Los Angeles, the second of twelve children born to William and Isabelle Lennon in their small house on Penmar Avenue in Venice. Her father had performed four-part harmony with his own brothers during the Big Band era, and he taught the same traditions to his children from the time they could carry a tune.
Peggy’s role in the quartet was the high soprano, the top note of the chord, the voice that provided what vocal arrangers call “brilliance” — the upper-frequency shimmer that lets a harmony cut through a room. It is technically demanding work. The high soprano has no place to hide.
Every intonation problem lives at the top of the chord, audible to anyone paying attention.
She was 14 when the group debuted on The Lawrence Welk Show on Christmas Eve 1955. She would not leave that professional world until 1999.
She Married a Trumpet Player She Met on the Welk Set
Dick Cathcart was a Dixieland trumpet virtuoso who had worked with the Army Air Force Radio Orchestra during the war and went on to perform with Ray McKinley, Alvino Rey, and Bob Crosby before joining the Welk organization as a featured soloist. He and Peggy met on the set and married in 1964.
They had six children together. Their first, Julie Anne Mary, was born on March 17, 1965, and her birth was noted on the Welk broadcast and covered in national media.
Peggy structured her performance schedule around the Saturday tapings and brought her children to the studio when she could, raising a family and maintaining a professional career simultaneously in a way that was simply expected of women in that era with no particular acknowledgment of the difficulty.
Julie was four years old in August 1969.
The Summer That Changed Everything
The sisters had been aware of unusual fan behavior for years. Letters, proposals, rings sent through the mail. Bert Lennon’s response to these had consistently been to tell his daughters to be polite. He called them fans. The era had no vocabulary for what some of them actually were.
Chet Young had been committed to Atascadero State Hospital, a high-security psychiatric facility, and had been diagnosed as dangerously insane. His delusion was specific and total: he believed he was married to Peggy Lennon. The obstacle, as he understood it, was her father.
On August 12, 1969, he drove to the Venice Golf Course and waited. At noon he shot Bert Lennon twice in the back and once in the head as he lay on the ground. He fled. The family was placed under 24-hour police protection. Young remained at large for two months before being found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the Sierra Nevada, the same weapon confirmed as the murder weapon beside him.
The family found the letter afterward. A cutout of Bert’s face with a gun pointed at his head. The words “High Noon.” It had arrived before the murder and sat unopened.
Six weeks later, Peggy was back in front of a camera filming a variety show, performing comedy sketches with Jimmy Durante while FBI agents stood watch on the set.
She Kept Performing for Thirty More Years
The variety show lasted one season. What followed was a decade-long partnership with Andy Williams, who gave the sisters a professional home on his show and included them in his touring company.
The arrangement provided stability without the exposure of headlining their own production in the immediate aftermath of everything 1969 had taken.
By the 1970s they were performing at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas with a fully staged concert act. By 1994 they had relocated their families to Branson, Missouri, to headline the Welk Champagne Theater. Branson suited them. The community was built around the kind of audience that had loved them since 1955, and a fixed residency meant no more touring, no more strangers approaching backstage, no more uncertainty about who was in the room.
Peggy performed in Branson for five years. In 1999 she retired at 58, after 44 years as the group’s high soprano. Her younger sister Mimi took her place. The original four-sister lineup that had debuted on Christmas Eve 1955 was over.
Her First Husband Died, Then She Married a Doctor
Dick Cathcart died of cancer in November 1993 after nearly thirty years of marriage. The following year Peggy moved to Branson with her sisters for the residency. In 1995 she married Dr. Robert Preston Felt, a physician who had practiced family medicine in Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley for 55 years.
He had served as Chief of Staff at two hospitals and was described by patients as the kind of doctor who called to check on you personally. He was a widower. They were both people who had spent their lives in demanding public-facing professions and were ready for something quieter.
Dr. Felt died on December 7, 2013, at age 87. Peggy was widowed for the second time.
Where Peggy Lennon Is Today
Peggy Lennon is 84 years old and lives in the Northridge, California area. Her specific address is kept private, a precaution she has maintained since 1969 that requires no explanation.
She participated in the 2011 PBS documentary Same Song, Separate Voices, which documented the sisters’ lives and gave Peggy the opportunity to speak about the murder on her own terms, as an older woman with enough distance to describe what it had done to her without being destroyed by it.
She has six children and a number of grandchildren. Two of her sisters are still performing. One is retired in Branson. Peggy is in California, quietly.
She outlived the man who was obsessed with her, the man who killed her father, both of her husbands, and the career that defined her public identity for four decades.
She is still here at 84, which is not a small thing given everything 1969 tried to take.
