3:30 AM, February 3rd, 1959. A single engined 1947 Beechcraft Bonanza B35 is reported missing. In it are three unlucky musicians: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper.
At approximately 9:15 AM, Hubert Dwyer takes off in a small aircraft to search for them. Shortly after, he finds the wreckage in a cornfield about 5 miles northwest of Hector Airport, their destination.
Earlier in January...
Buddy, Ritchie, The Big Bopper, and Dion and the Belmonts set out for a 24 day tour of the midwestsern United States. The shows are booked closely and the performers are (reluctantly) transported by tour bus. The tour, being a disaster from the start, only gets worse. It's nicknamed "The Tour From Hell." The bus's heating system fails shortly after the tour starts, Holly's drummer is taken to the hospital with a frost bitten foot, and rebellion begins to set in.
The February 2nd show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa wasn't even originally on the tour. Promoters were trying to fill an open spot on the tour and so they called the venue's manager, Caroll Anderson, and offered him the show. He accepted.
When the musicians get to the show, they are already in a bad mood and tired of riding on the cold bus. Buddy tells his bandmates, Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings, that he is going to charter a plane to take them to the next stop in Moorhead, Minnesota. The plane costs a whopping $36 per person.
J.P. Richardson, aka The Big Bopper, has caught the flu and asks Waylon Jennings for his seat on the plane; Jennings gives it to him. When Buddy hears this, he jokingly says to Jennings, "Well, I hope your ol' bus freezes up." In response, Jenning says, "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes." Little does he know, this joke will haunt Waylon for the rest of his life.
Valens, who has never flown in a plane before, bugs Tommy Allsup all night for his seat. Tommy says that he'll flip Ritchie for it. A DJ working at the concert flips a coin shortly before everybody leaves and Valens wins.
The three passengers and the pilot, 21 year old Roger Peterson, board the plane and take off at approximately 12:55 AM.
Peterson is a novice pilot and is not trained to fly the Bonanza, or in the stormy winter conditions. In fact, the altitude indicator in the Bonanza displays the aircraft altitude in an opposite way from most other planes from this time. This means that Peterson may believe that he's ascending when he's really descending. The Bonanza strikes the ground of Albert Juhl's cornfield at nearly 170 mph. It tumbles and skids another 570 feet across the frozen land before piling into the fence at the end of the field.
When the plane is found, Holly and Valens bodies are found outside of the plane, Richardson's body is thrown over the fence, and the pilot's body is still trapped inside. All four are very gory sites, everybody died upon impact.
When Buddy met Maria Elena Santiago in June of 1958, he asked her to marry him 5 hours into their first date. Less than two months later on August 15th, the two were wed. Maria traveled on tours with Buddy and acted as a manager. She decided not to go on the Winter Dance Party Tour because she had found out that she was pregnant. She begged Buddy to stay, but she knew he had to go. When Maria found out about the February 3rd crash, she had a miscarriage soon after and lost the baby. She didn't go to the funeral and has never visited his grave. Maria blames herself for Buddy's death, saying, "In a way, I blame myself. I was not feeling well when he left. I was two weeks pregnant, and I wanted Buddy to stay with me, but he had scheduled that tour. It was the only time I wasn't with him. And I blame myself because I know that, if only I had gone along, Buddy never would have gotten into that airplane."
She has never come to terms with Buddy's premature death at 22.
My favorite Buddy Holly lyrics:
'Well...All Right'
Well all right, so I’m being foolish.
Well all, right let people know
about the dreams and wishes you wish,
in the night when lights are low.
Well all right, well all right,
we’ll live and love with all our might.
Well all right, well all right,
our lifetime of love will be all right.
Well, all right, so I'm going steady.
It's all right when people say
that those foolish kids can’t be ready
for the love that comes their way.
R.I.P. Charles Hardin Holley (Buddy Holly)
