Mr. Write's Page

I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride.
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.

— From “American Pie” by Don McLean, which was dedicated to Buddy Holly.

————

My teen years were the late 1950s. I was there for the birth of rock and roll. I knew every song and every artist of the day in major detail, and you can bet I took it all very seriously.

Back then, of course, the rock music universe was considerably smaller and easier to fathom than it is today. In those days, dozens of bands and singers were on the national stage, not bazillions.

That meant your brain was capable of handling pretty much all the data you chose to assimilate. And your music library was smaller and more manageable.

Not only that, you acquired the songs from a physical store, which required at least a degree of time and effort.

And you took the songs home on vinyl — round, flat, black plastic things with grooves, which you placed on a “record player,” which had a needle that fit into the grooves and miraculously rendered sound. A fascinating concept.

But I digress. We’re all experts on the popular culture of our teen years because we’re wired that way. I know a lot about the fledgling years of rock music because I soaked up the details with great enthusiasm, like an adolescent sponge.

Which is why, when I run across a fact from that era that managed to escape me, I am shocked, surprised, and anxious for the details.

It happened to me most recently on February 3, 2016.

That date was the 57th anniversary of the tragic 1959 plane crash in Iowa that killed three popular singers — Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson — and the 21-year-old pilot of their chartered aircraft.

The new fact I just learned about the incident: Buddy Holly’s trademark black horn-rimmed glasses, not found during the crash scene investigation and believed lost, miraculously resurfaced 20 years later.

A bit of background.

In January 1959, the band Buddy Holly and the Crickets was on a winter tour with several other performers. Appearances were scheduled around Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota.

Up to that point, the tour had been difficult. The weather was brutally cold, and the venues sometimes were hundreds of miles apart. The heating system on their tour bus had failed. Incredibly, in early January, the drummer for the Crickets was hospitalized with frostbite to his feet.

On February 2, when the tour arrived for an appearance in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly decided to fly ahead of the bus in a chartered four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza. His plan was to fly to Fargo, North Dakota, with bandmates Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup to get some extra rest while awaiting the arrival of the others.

By the time the Beechcraft was ready to depart that night, Richardson was ill with the flu. To spare Richardson the grueling bus ride, Jennings gave up his seat in the Beechcraft.

In the spirit of the moment, Allsup offered to flip a coin with Valens for the fourth seat. Valens called heads and won. He told the others it was the first time in his life he ever won anything.

At 1:00 AM, mere minutes into the flight, in turbulent weather, the plane crashed into a cornfield near Mason City, Iowa. All four men were killed.

The significance of Holly’s thick black glasses probably is lost on the younger crowd, but those frames were an important part of his image and charm — so much so that the style had become known as “Buddy Holly glasses.”

Oddly enough, wearing horn-rims was not Holly’s idea.

Holly was nearsighted in the extreme. At age 15, a routine eye exam at his school in Lubbock, Texas, flagged his poor vision. His parents took him to an optometrist, who found that Holly’s vision was truly awful — 20/800 in both eyes.

A few years later, when Holly and his band were starting out, he wore glasses with clear plastic frames because he thought they were less conspicuous. And, on stage, the band wore ordinary business suits.

But when they arrived in New York, their new friends the Everly Brothers stepped in. The brothers introduced the band to Ivy League clothes — preppy blazers, narrow ties, button-down collars — and urged Holly to ditch his old-fashioned frames in favor of horn-rimmed glasses.

Thick black glasses weren’t a new idea. Comedian Harold Lloyd wore them in silent films in the 1920s. On television, they were popularized by talk show host Steve Allen and by Phil Silvers in the role of “Sergeant Bilko.”

However, Holly’s glasses were a bit unique, and it was his longtime optometrist, J. Davis Armistead of Lubbock, who selected them.

Armistead was on vacation in Mexico City when he spotted a design by the Mexican manufacturer Faiosa. The frames were not only heavy and bold, but also featured an interesting upsweep to the top corners.

Armistead bought two sets of Faiosa frames for Holly to consider, one black and one amber. Holly chose the black pair.

After the crash, the investigators searched for Holly’s glasses at the scene, to no avail. Then, in 1980, the sheriff of a nearby Iowa county found a sealed envelope marked “Personal property — airplane crash — rec’d 7 April ’59.” in an old box of papers.

Inside were Holly’s glasses, which had been found at the scene after the winter snow melted. The glasses had been dutifully turned over to the authorities and dutifully filed away.

The sheriff immediately returned the glasses to Holly’s widow. They are now on display at the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock.

The 1959 plane crash had another sad consequence regarding Marie Elena Holly, the “widowed bride” in the Don McLean song.

In 1953, after her mother died, Maria Elena Santiago came to New York from Puerto Rico to live with her aunt. Maria met Buddy Holly in 1958, when she was working as a receptionist for his music publisher.

With the aunt’s permission, Holly took Maria on a date. A few hours into the date, Holly handed her a rose and asked her to marry him. The ceremony was held two months later in Lubbock.

Maria was six weeks pregnant when she learned from television news reports that Holly had been killed. The next day, she miscarried.

That incident led to a key policy change, virtually nationwide, whereby the names of victims are withheld until family members are informed.

Buddy and Maria Elena Holly at their wedding.

Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. Richardson. They died at ages 22, 17, and 28, respectively.

Holly’s iconic glasses, now on display in Lubbock.