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Ralph David Samuel's avatar

A wonderful column for those of us who were young fans of both these great musicians AND the Big Bopper ("Hello Baby....") I was 13 in 8th grade. I had bought my copy of Peggy Sue (I still have it) when it first came out. I liked La Bamba / O Donna, but my allowance meant I had not yet committed to a purchase. I don't recall seeing any photos of the crash site back in early 1959. And the deaths, while tragic, seemed figuratively as remote from Philly as they actually were. None in our class could imagine the horror of the crash.

And at the time, the next big thing on my list was planning to take my twin cousins from N. Carolina to Dick Clark's Bandstand in April. Back then the show was still being produced live every weekday afternoon at the Channel 6 studios on Market St in West Philly. A friend of my parents who managed a TV station, got us favored treatment to be placed at the front of the line for admission. By that time, the crash and deaths were a distant, fading memory.

Thank you for your column. It brought back to me those mostly quiet Eisenhower days, how little of the real world I was aware of, and how quickly that would all change during my approaching highschool JFK years.

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Nancy Harmon Jenkins's avatar

Great, Peter! Thank you!

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