Peter Witham grew up in Burnham writing songs and playing in local bands, including The Burnham Boys and Spooky Daily Pride.

Over the years he became an accomplished blues and rockabilly guitarist, as well as a singer and songwriter.

In 1999 Witham, then 27, remixed and recorded a song he wrote when he was 16 in memory of his aunt who was killed by a drunken driver.

The song, “Sunsets of My Mind,” was recorded in Boston and sent home to Maine just a week before the student shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

The lyrics ask, “Does the pain go away? Will I ever smile again?” It was played on radio stations all over the country as the nation tried to come to grips with the tragedy of Columbine.

Now Peter Witham, 43, needs some of that positive energy sent back his way.

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Witham, who lives in Portland with his wife, Kristen, and their 18-month-old daughter, Susan, is in the hospital suffering from irregularities in his kidneys, spleen, lungs and pancreas. Doctors aren’t really sure what’s wrong with him.

His mother, Sandra Witham, said Monday that at the time the song came out, “I could not sleep, because I felt the song would or might help some of the people there. I got a list of radio stations and sent the song to 11 different stations.”

“Sunsets of My Mind” is an acoustic-guitar expression of loss, grief and the hope of meeting a lost loved one again some day.

Sandra Witham sent “Sunsets of My Mind” to churches in the Littleton area, too, and “people would write back and say how it comforted them. He had a lot of letters from people who had lost people.”

The song “went viral” in 1999 style — getting play on radio stations and at churches.

Witham did a lot of benefit concerts over the past 20 years, raising money to fight hunger and in support of Alzheimer’s research.

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Witham, a member of the Portland band Cozmik Zombies, has been in Maine Medical Center in Portland for two weeks.

“They don’t really know what’s wrong with him. He’s been to the hospital twice — and the third time he couldn’t get up and his wife had to call 911,” Sandra Witham said. “Two-thirds of his blood was in his stomach.”

Witham underwent emergency surgery on his spleen and pancreas, but his kidneys began to fail and his lung collapsed, she said.

“They can’t find out what’s caused it,” she said. “There was a question if he was going to make it or not.”

Three benefits are planned to help the family with living expenses while Peter is out of work and his wife takes time from her job to look after him.

Witham has played venues professionally in Portland and Boston. He also wrote the class song for Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield.

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“Now he needs a benefit to help them get through this so that he can get well enough to get back to doing what he was doing,” Sandra Witham said.

Doug Harlow — 612-2367

dharlow@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @Doug_Harlow


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