R.I.P. Clare Alden MacIntyre-Ross, Inspiration For Song 'Taxi'

Clare Alden MacIntyre-Ross

She came from swank Scarsdale, N.Y. He was a guitar strummer from Brooklyn.

They met as summer camp counselors in the early 1960s, and the result was a weepy love song, “Taxi,” a hit for Harry Chapin in 1972.

Clare Alden MacIntyre-Ross, who spent her final years in Falls Church, Va., died March 9 of complications from a stroke at age 73, according to The Wall Street Journal. The daughter of Malcolm MacIntyre, a lawyer who headed Eastern Airlines from 1959 to 1963, she had an on-and-off romance with Chapin in the early 1960s.

Her parents weren’t enthusiastic about the match, family members say.

Their split inspired the song, described by the musician as about 60% accurate, according to his biographer, Peter M. Coan.

In the song, a cabdriver discovers his old flame, now wealthy, in the back of his taxi. She hands him $20 for a $2.50 fare and says, “Harry, keep the change.”

In real life, the two drifted apart and married other people. Though Mr. Chapin once considered becoming a taxi driver, his musical aspirations prevailed.



Ms. MacIntyre lived in Argentina with her first husband before moving to New York and working as an institutional securities sales executive at Drexel Burnham Lambert in the 1970s, when few women held such jobs. Her Spanish-language abilities helped her find Latin-American clients.

Chapin never completely got over Ms. MacIntyre, according to Mr. Coan: “She was the love of his life.” He died died at age 38 in 1981 on the Long Island Expressway when a truck slammed into his Volkswagen Rabbit.