Buddy Holly: Biography (51 page)

But Sheridan’s story contained some first-rate reporting and a number of newsy nuggets. For example, after the Crickets left Buddy he “examined his career” and decided he was “better off on his own,” Sheridan wrote. Buddy and Slim Corbin were well along in their plans for Buddy’s summer 1959 Lubbock concert. Sheridan also learned of Buddy’s upcoming LP of “sacred and spiritual” songs, and he broke the news that Buddy and his new band were set for a four-week tour of England in March 1959. Buddy intended to fly abroad and sail back on a luxury liner, “just for fun.” The labels for his new company, Taupe Records, had already been printed. Sheridan also reported that Buddy’s purpose in taking flying lessons was to fly between gigs and come home to Lubbock more often.

On the day Buddy was buried, Saturday, February 7, Niki Sullivan and Tinker Carlen were working at McKissick Auto. Naturally both of them wanted to attend, but they were informed that “only one person will be allowed to go to the funeral,” Tinker recalled in 1992. Then Larry Holley asked Niki to be a pallbearer. “I told Niki, ‘You go and I’ll work,’” Tinker revealed in 1992. After Niki left, Tinker slipped out of the shop, got in his pickup, and drove to Tabernacle Baptist Church, where a large crowd was already beginning to form. “I got paid for goin’,” Tinker said.

Peggy Sue Allison went to Buddy’s parents’ house to commiserate with Mr. and Mrs. Holley before the funeral. She remained there until it was time to leave for the church. Along the route to Tabernacle Baptist, kids playing with Hula Hoops in their front yards stopped to watch the unusually heavy traffic heading toward the unimpressive brown shed at 1911 Thirty-fourth Street.

The church was packed with a capacity crowd of fifteen hundred. The citizens who had ignored Buddy in his lifetime, according him no honors or even a hometown concert, now grabbed every seat at his last rites and overflowed into the lobby, where loudspeakers had to be set up to accommodate the crowd, and into the parking lot. Americans indeed love a good funeral. How ironic that death begets legend—that Holly, like Elvis Presley eighteen years later, would become a true legend only in death. The legitimate mourners had difficulty making their way through the onlookers. Phil Everly later told Kurt Loder that he “flew down to Lubbock” and “sat with his parents.” He was not a pallbearer, however, because he couldn’t stand to see Buddy “put down in the earth.” Don Everly refused to attend, he told Loder, because Buddy’s death “just freaked me right out.”

The closed light gray casket had a framed twelve-by-fourteen-inch photograph of Buddy atop it, according to Ken Johnson, who helped Rev. Ben D. Johnson officiate. In addition to Niki, the pallbearers included Sonny Curtis, Bob Montgomery, Jerry, and Joe B. Among the honorary pallbearers were Larry Welborn and two of the Roses, Dave Bingham and Bob Linville. During the service Niki Sullivan sat between Phil Everly and Joe B.; Jerry sat directly in front of them, Niki told Griggs in 1978. Norman Petty, despite the bitterness and near violence of his final confrontation with Buddy, was in attendance. Vi Petty, who just months before had insulted Buddy’s wife, was also there.

Peggy Sue nervously scanned the packed congregation, looking for a seat but finding that all the choice ones were occupied. The spillover crowd included a “heavy density of teenagers,” the
Avalanche-Journal
later noted. Peggy Sue was forced to sit by herself, at the back of the church, alone. “The thing I remember,” she later told Griggs, “is that Maria Elena wasn’t there.” According to the
Avalanche-Journal,
“His bride of less than six months, the former Maria Ellna [sic] Santiago of New York City, was ill at the home of the Lubbock youth’s parents and unable to attend the services. She came to Lubbock Thursday [sic].”

Recalling the occasion years later, Maria Elena explained in a 1993 interview, “I was in Lubbock, but I could not attend the funeral. I could not handle that. My reasoning was I didn’t want to see Buddy dead. I wanted to keep his memory the way I saw him when he left.”

The competition for seats was so hectic that even honored guests were edged out. Ken Johnson recalls in 1993, “There was one pew that had a vacant space in it that had been reserved for the ushers. They never did have the opportunity to come in and take their seats. The auditorium was filled, every seat in that auditorium, and it would seat at that time around fifteen hundred people. There were people out on the front porch, in the vestibule, and some even in the parking lot. We did not have an external PA system, but the PA went into the vestibule of the church.”

Seated in one of the front pews near the casket, Buddy’s family appeared remarkably composed. Niki Sullivan was “surprised and amazed” that L.O. and Ella Holley “held up so well,” Niki later stated in
Rockin’ 50s.
Tinker Carlen observed in 1992 that “ever’body was tryin’ to put up a good front, but the funeral was real sad. I remember seein’ Phil Everly and Norman and Vi. It was hard on ever’one.” Bill Pickering sang “Beyond the Sunset,” an upbeat hymn by Virgil Brock and his wife, Blanche. The song paints a picture of life after death so appealing that not even the most hardened atheist could resist it. The Brocks composed it after viewing a spectacular sunset at Rainbow Point on Winona Lake in Indiana. Awestruck, Virgil turned to Blanche and asked, “What lies beyond the wondrous sunset? What will it be like when our work is done and the experience of heaven begun?” As described in the song, heaven is a place free of fear and work, where the dead meet God face-to-face and find peace of mind at last. They are reunited with everyone they’ve ever loved and lost, never to be separated again.

The funeral fell flat as soon as the preachers took over. This was not surprising in Lubbock in 1959. Buddy could have been an obscure clerk for all the mention the clergy made of rock ’n’ roll. “I don’t think the service was about a star,” Niki later told Griggs. In fact, it didn’t even seem to be a funeral; it was more like an ordinary, impersonal Sunday morning church service, Niki added. “Brother [Ben] Johnson had the main message of the funeral,” Ken Johnson related in 1993. “Mine was the first part of the message. I read Buddy’s obituary, read some scripture, commented on it, and then had prayer for the family.” Pretty uninspired stuff for the rocker of ages. Not one of Buddy’s records was played. Bill Pickering sang another song, though later he was unable to recall the title. “I had never heard of it before. It was a song that I had to read the music to as I sang it,” Pickering stated in
Reminiscing
in 1981.

The most appropriate musical selection was a recording by the Angelic Gospel Singers, “I’ll Be All Right,” long a favorite of Buddy’s. At the end of the service, everyone lined up behind the family and passed in front of the casket. Buddy’s parents had shown no emotion throughout the funeral, which “made it easier” for everyone else, Niki said in 1978. Joe B. still thought Buddy was alive, explaining in 1987 that, because the casket was never opened, he could continue to refuse to “accept the reality” of Buddy’s death.

At the conclusion of the service, the crowd filed outside to wait for the casket to be brought from the church. The pallbearers came out with everyone else, then realized they’d forgotten the casket and had to go back inside. In a few minutes they reemerged, this time bearing their burden and depositing it in the hearse. Peggy Sue could stand no more. As soon as the funeral was over, she went home, unable to face the cemetery. What bothered her more than anything else was the large crowd, though apparently it was a perfectly orderly one. According to the
Avalanche-Journal,
the predominantly teenage throng had “sat mostly in silence as the Rev. Ben D. Johnson, pastor of the church, delivered the oration.”

Leaving the parking lot, the funeral procession wound through Lubbock, likely passing the places—Tom Lubbock Senior High, the Hi-D-Ho Drive-In, the roller rink, the radio stations, and the theaters—that had defined Buddy’s world and provided its limits until a brief eighteen months ago. The Lubbock City Cemetery is far out on the east side of town, just beyond a vast automobile junkyard. Buddy’s casket was placed at the grave site, relatively near the entrance. Ben Johnson spoke briefly. “There were some tears,” Niki later told Griggs, but again Niki noted the equanimity of Buddy’s parents. Terry Noland, who had attended Tabernacle Baptist Church with Buddy, approached L. O. and Ella Holley and gave them the letter in which Buddy had invited Terry to come to New York and live and work with him after the tour. Terry’s brother Bob would tell Griggs in 1982 about Rev. Ben Johnson “hating rock ’n’ roll because of all the rock ’n’ rollers that were coming out of his church.” In the same interview, Terry would expose the church’s hypocrisy, revealing that after Buddy became successful and lavished money on the church, “that changed everything.”

Just as Maria Elena had avoided the funeral, she also stayed away from the graveside service. “Up to this date I refuse to see his grave,” she said in 1993. “I won’t do it.” To her, Buddy is still a living presence, she his eternal bride. “I want to leave the morbid parts out,” she told
Mason City Globe-Gazette
reporter Kevin Baskins in 1992.

Buddy’s parents were able to draw stupendous strength from their faith, which was the kind described in the hymn “How Firm a Foundation,” addressed “to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled”: “When thro’ the deep waters I call thee to go, the rivers of sorrow shall not overflow.” According to Larry, “They definitely felt that they would get to see Buddy again,” he later stated in
Reminiscing.
Such belief in a literal resurrection of body and soul echoes the theology expressed in Protestant hymns like “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder (I’ll Be There),” “In the Sweet Bye-and-Bye,” and “Beautiful Island of Somewhere.” Egos and personalities will be completely intact, ready to resume worldly relationships exactly where they’d been left off. In fairness to the hymns, no one has yet disproved their vision.

Buddy’s casket was lowered into the ground, and the mourners dispersed. Some of them gathered at the home of Buddy’s parents. “Maria Elena come over there with her aunt,” Tinker Carlen remarked in 1992, “and I remember Phil Everly was out there in the front yard and we’s a-talkin’, and I remember Larry Welborn was there and Bob Montgomery. There was a bunch of ’em.” Niki Sullivan summed up one of the saddest days any of them would ever experience: “We all then went home and spent a quiet afternoon,” he told Griggs in 1978.

A few weeks after Buddy’s burial, Ella Holley approached Ken Johnson, who recalled their conversation in a 1993 interview. “Brother Johnson, I want to apologize,” Mrs. Holley said.

“What for?” Ken Johnson asked.

“Well, the way I acted when you and Ben D. Johnson were up there on my porch and I heard the terrible news about my son.”

“Mrs. Holley, you don’t need to apologize about that. There’s not many things that are a heavier burden than a mother losing her son.”

“I’ll always have a very warm place reserved for you in my heart. You and Buddy were about the same age, you know.” Says Johnson today, “She was a very strong person and so was Brother Holley. They always were. You would be amazed at the graciousness that Mrs. Holley had. She was a little bitty lady. A small person, even for a woman. But she was so gracious.”

Buddy’s grave lies near a road that runs through the cemetery. A lone tree stands nearby. Beyond his grave looms a mammoth grain elevator with at least sixty silos. The original tombstone, an upright guitar, was stolen shortly after it was installed. The replacement stone lies flat against the earth and is more like a marker than a tombstone. The engraving is tasteful and appropriate—a Fender Stratocaster, some musical notes, and a few holly leaves. The inscription reads: “In loving memory of our own Buddy Holley—September 7, 1936–February 3, 1959.”

Restoring the “e” to his surname—Holley—seems at first an odd denial of Buddy’s fame as the rock star Buddy Holly. But it is consistent with the attitude that prideful and pious Texans had always taken toward him. The church had rejected his music and the locals had remained impervious to his celebrity. In burying him as Buddy Holley, they now attempted to redeem him from the clutches of the devil’s music and reclaim him as “our own Buddy Holley.”

Part Three

Legend

Chapter Fifteen

The Days After

In the months following Buddy’s death, the CAB report laid the blame for the crash on pilot error but did little to prevent rumors of foul play, especially after Buddy’s pistol was discovered at the crash site. During spring thaw, farmer Albert Juhl, who was Delbert Juhl’s father, finally turned up the gun, according to the
Mason City Globe-Gazette,
“while cleaning small bits of wreckage out of his field in preparation for seeding it to pasture.” When the
Globe-Gazette
revealed that two of the chambers in the six-shot pistol were empty, rumors spread that the pilot had been shot. The paper attempted to allay such speculation by reporting that “there were no shells in the remaining two chambers nor were there any empty shell casings in them.” But a further complication set in when it was disclosed that the pistol had contained
no
bullets when the sheriff received it because Juhl had “fired all four bullets into the air when he found the pistol.” The plot thickened twenty years later, in 1979, when Griggs interviewed Sheriff Jerry Allen, who insisted that “only one shot had been fired by Albert Juhl.”