Buddy HollyMemorial to Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper nestled in an Iowa cornfield. Except for the legions of crickets who begin their chorus long before nightfall, there is only the occasional rustle of cornstalks from the ghostly breeze. It’s a quarter mile trek from the gravel road marked by the bent green sign of Gull Avenue and 315th Street. Beside me to the north, a rusty barbed wire fence is choked by tall grasses. It borders endless acres of quiet cornfields. Beside me to the south, silk-topped cornstalks stretch for miles, poking into the blue sky. My camera swings from my hand. My steps are muffled in the thick, clipped grass of the path that gently rises and falls with the landscape. Cresting a knoll, I catch sight of the glint, an indicator that I’m almost there. My wish to visit this place was seeded nearly a dozen years ago, and although I've never been here, I immediately recognize the site where the Beechcraft Bonanza went down 59 years ago, the day the music died. We’ve all heard those songs. Most of us have watched the movies depicting the lives of Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper Jiles P. Richardson, and pilot Roger Peterson.  Clear Lake Iowa, February 3, 1959 was the day that three music legends chartered a plane after performing at the Surf Ballroom during the Winter Dance Party tour, en route to their next stop of Moorhead, Minnesota. Moments after take-off, the single engine plane plunged into a cornfield at the very spot in front of me. Sobering, touching, heartbreaking, but I’m so glad I made the journey. And as I stood there absorbing the surroundings and the resulting emotion, I heard the distant echoes of La Bamba, Chantilly Lace, and Peggy Sue…

Famous eyewearBuddy Holly's famous glasses mark the memorial site entrance.