Thanks to Don McLean and American Pie for helping us all remember. Thanks to Aerial America for giving us a visual image of the site in Iowa. Thanks to Roadside America for giving us the location. Thanks to the landowner for permitting the memorial erected by Ken Paquette and for allowing access. Thanks to a geocache owner for devising a respectful way to create a “cache” here and giving us additional incentive. It all came together for us today when we parked our rig alongside an Iowa backroad near the Buddy Holly Eyeglasses Sculpture and walked a quarter mile back a path between corn fields to a memorial to Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, and their pilot Roger Peterson where we pondered the lives and the music lost that wintry night in 1959 then took the selfie we needed to post as proof we’d “found the cache.” On the walk back to the road we passed five incoming pilgrims also coming to pay their own respects.
As we were approaching the site we wondered aloud what how the farmer who owned the field felt about the crash. Today we learned that he had been a fan of The Big Bopper and was saddened by the loss. We learned this from the great granddaughter of the first investigator on the scene the night of the crash. She told us her grandfather who was ten at the time was also seen in newspaper photos taken that night. We met her in Grand Rapids, she is a receptionist at the Judy Garland Museum.