A legendary folk singer-songwriter who wrote his biggest hit at a Central New York school is dead at age 86.

Peter Yarrow, best known as one-third of the music trio Peter, Paul and Mary, died Tuesday, according to publicist Ken Sunshine. Yarrow had been battling bladder cancer for the past four years.

“Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life. The world knows Peter Yarrow the iconic folk activist, but the human being behind the legend is every bit as generous, creative, passionate, playful, and wise as his lyrics suggest,” his daughter Bethany said in a statement.

Yarrow co-wrote the group’s biggest hit, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” while at Cornell University with college friend Leonard Lipton, according to the Associated Press. Despite theories it was inspired by drug usage and referenced marijuana smoke, Yarrow said it was a tale about the loss of childhood innocence as a young boy named Jackie Paper outgrows his make-believe dragon friend.

“A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys,” Yarrow said.

Peter, Paul and Mary, which also featured bandmates Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers, was one of the biggest groups of the 1960s with six Billboard Top 10 singles, two No. 1 albums and five Grammys Awards. The group, known for its harmonies and support of civil rights, also helped popularize Bob Dylan by turning two of his songs, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” into hits, plus covered John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”

FILE – Folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, from left, Mary Travers, Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow, perform at a Los Angeles benefit to aid to Cambodian refugees on Jan. 30, 1980. (AP Photo/George Brich, File)AP

Yarrow was born May 31, 1938, in New York and grew up playing violin and guitar, embracing the music of folk icons like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. He graduated from Cornell in 1959 with a degree in psychology, but found his true calling when he worked as a teaching assistant for a class in American folklore his senior year.

“I did it for the money because I wanted to wash dishes less and play guitar more,” he told the late record company executive Joe Smith, according to the AP. But as he led the class in song, he began to discover the emotional impact music could have on an audience.

“I saw these young people at Cornell who were basically very conservative in their backgrounds opening their hearts up and singing with an emotionality and a concern through this vehicle called folk music,” he said. “It gave me a clue that the world was on its way to a certain kind of movement, and that folk music might play a part in it and that I might play a part in folk music.”

Yarrow connected with Stookey and Travers in New York City after college when Albert Grossman, who managed Dylan and Janis Joplin, sought to form a trio with a female singer. Stookey was a guitar-strumming Greenwich Village comic at the time, and Travers was a friend who had performed with Seeger; they soon found Yarrow’s tenor voice blended perfectly with Stookey’s baritone and her contralto.

The group went on hiatus in 1969 as Yarrow, Stookey and Travers all pursued solo careers. Yarrow pleaded guilty that same year to taking “indecent liberties” with a 14-year-old girl at a hotel, and served less than three months in jail. He was later granted a presidential pardon by President Jimmy Carter in 1981, but continued to be criticized in the decades following.

“It was an era of real indiscretion and mistakes by categorically male performers,” Yarrow reportedly said. “I was one of them. I got nailed. I was wrong. I’m sorry for it.”

Peter, Paul and Mary reunited in 1978 for an anti-nuclear-power concert Yarrow organized in Los Angeles. They remained together until Travers’ death in 2009; Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform together and as solo acts afterwards.

The trio was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999 and received a lifetime achievement award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006. Yarrow also received an Emmy nomination in 1979 for the animated film “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

Yarrow is survived by two children, with ex-wife Mary Beth McCarthy, and a granddaughter.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.