On Veterans Day, a friend invited me to have coffee at the pastry shop next to the Old Saybrook train station. We were having a serious conversation about the challenges that education has in urban settings, where he teaches, and I quoted Darwin as someone who should be listened to regarding the catastrophic effects of not having enough poetry and music in people’s lives.

He looked at me and said I work too hard, and should get out more and have fun. I replied that I am too busy taking care of songs and gave him a copy of a CD recently recorded at Fortune Studios at Connecticut College — “Gentle Neighbors: Songs for Peace” — and asked him to talk to me when he had listened to it. He took it, although you could see on his face he was not too excited. But he listened, and he called the following day to say he loved it. “The music is very relaxing.”

As Professor James McNeish of the music department at Conn said, “We were all pleasantly surprised by the quality and thoughtfulness of Charles’s music. I feel his message is one the country needs right now.”

Charles is Charles Frink, my late husband.

Most of the pieces in this recording were written for specific works of theater, with the exception of two sea songs, included because they go well with the general theme of peace and a harmonious relationship with nature. As the fourth anniversary of his death approaches, Dec. 26, I try to identify the qualities in this music that makes it relevant today, and the commitment of the composer to a life that made it possible for him to write it.

As a child of the Depression and the only son of a Lost Battalion solider — the name given to the nine companies of the United States 77th Division isolated and decimated by German forces in 1918 during World War I — Charles had two interests when he was a kid: music, and the state of the human race. Yet at times it seemed frivolous to him to spend time with music in the face of humanity’s pain.

Thankfully, he managed to follow his heart for most of his life, creating beautiful musical works in which he sought to provide the singer and listener with “a harmonious resolution” to an emotional and intellectual need.

He composed the title song, “Gentle Neighbors,” after an experience related to his work as a social studies teacher at New London High. He had a great number of students who were very concerned with social justice, and one day, stopped at that light in Truman Street that “lasts forever,” he saw, standing at the window of the tenement house located just there, one of his former students.

She was from a wealthy family, with a mansion on Pequot Avenue. She was rocking in her arms a baby. A few months later, Charles saw the girl’s mother at the supermarket and inquired about her. The girl had died. There was no mention of the baby, nothing.

The song is a lullaby for both the mother and the child. “Sometimes I can almost find, the rhymes to guide their way.”

There are two-and-a-half songs in Spanish in this collection (one is bilingual), and at least one-and-a-half of them are touchingly tied to current events. “Río Grande de Loíza,” with lyrics by the Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos, tells of her people‘s life struggles.

We owe a great thank you to the musicians who dared to tackle this music by themselves, without the help of previous recordings or writings to guide them. Jurate Waller communicates the spirit of the songs very convincingly, even when she sings in Spanish. Pianist Pat Newman approaches the difficult piano dynamics with more than great technique: she got the feeling right.

And the saxophone piece that starts and ends the CD, masterfully played by Joshua Thomas, sets the tone, requesting attention.

Coming back to the conversation about educating today‘s youth, here is Darwin’s quotation that Charles had copied in pencil and taped to the wall, and which had guided him as an educator and composer: “If I had my life to live over again, I would make it a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least every week. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness and may possibly be injurious to the intellect and, more probably, to the moral character by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”

The CD, “Gentle Neighbors: Songs for Peace,” can be found at The Telegraph in downtown New London.

Resurrección Espinosa-Frink is the widow of Charles Frink, who died in 2014 at age 86. A New Londoner and Yale grad, Frink’s varied talents and contributions included history teacher, composer and pianist (the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra and the Hartford Ballet performed his works), playwright with the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and a stint on the City Council. For questions or comments about the recording email composerpage@gmail.com.