Chapter 5: What's the first major news story you can remember living through?
Originally written January 18, 2021
For someone my age it’s not unreasonable to assume that the first major news story I lived through was the Kennedy assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.
And I remember that vividly.
I’d just turned 10 a couple of months before and was sitting in my 5th grade class (Mrs. Harlow, Nichols Hills Elementary School, Oklahoma City). We’d just returned from lunch recess when the principal, Myrna Kingston, got on the intercom and instructed all teachers to turn on the TV. There we learned that JFK had been shot in Dallas. Just a few minutes later, we learned that the president had died.
I was sad about Kennedy. But I also was extremely disappointed that the Friday night wrestling at Stockyards Coliseum was cancelled out of respect to the fallen president. (“That’s not going to ring him back,” I remember whining.)
I also remember that Sunday morning two days later going down the stairs to start the day. Before I reached the bottom I heard my grandfather shouting: “They shot the son of a bitch! They shot the son of a bitch!”
Yes, Pappa had just seen Jack Ruby murder Lee Harvey Oswald live on TV.
I wonder if Pappa would have liked this song. I sure do:
But actually, I have older memories of major news stories.
A year before, in late October 1962, I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. Our family went to the circus the night that Kennedy announced the news that Soviet missiles had been spotted in Cuba and that the U.S. would be blockading Cuba. I don’t actually remember watching that speech and there’s no way I would have understood the implications. All I remember is that my mother and grandmother were so upset that it kind of ruined the circus.
But probably the earliest news story I remember happened a few years before that.
On, or not long after February 3, 1959, at the age of 5, I was listening to the radio late at night in my room at our house on 50th Street in Oklahoma City. It was then that learned of the death of Buddy Holly, who went down in a plane crash along with The Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson) and Richie Valens. I’m not sure if it was an actual news bulletin I heard or just some Okie DJ lamenting the deaths sometime after the fact. But it was news to me. Very sad news.
I wasn’t really aware of Valens at the time. I’m sure it would have been a different story had I lived in Santa Fe then. “La Bamba” was a beloved standard for Santa Fe bands for years. But even at that young age I was a fan of the Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace.”
And I was a fan of Buddy, who was right up there with The Coasters and Elvis in my developing little rock ’n’ roll pantheon.
I was most familiar with Buddy’s song “Peggy Sue.” My love for the song went beyond the music. As a budding rock ’n’ roll freak, I used to watch American Bandstand on TV. I got this big crush on one of the girls who regularly danced on the show. She was a cute teenage blonde in a ponytail who I now assume was just some random teenager from Philadelphia.
But somehow I got it in my head that this girl was the Peggy Sue. (I assumed later that my mom told me that, although it’s also quite possible that it was just part of my wild imagination.) Every day on Bandstand I’d look for her.
Maybe my concern for this “Peggy Sue” is one reason that the memory of learning about Buddy’s death stuck with me for more than 60 years. Or perhaps it’s because this was one of the first times I ever had to deal with the whole concept of death. At that point in my life, nobody I knew and loved had died. I hadn’t even experienced the death of a pet.
Fast forward nearly a quarter of a century and I’d become friends with a Lubbock artist — and fellow music lover — Paul Milosevich, who had moved to Santa Fe. Paul knew just about all the great musicians who were from Lubbock. He personally introduced me to Terry Allen, Butch Hancock and Joe Ely.
Though Paul never met Lubbock’s most famous rocker, Buddy Holly, he did know the real Peggy Sue.
No, it wasn’t the girl I had a crush on from American Bandstand. Peggy Sue Gerron, who was the girlfriend of Jerry Allison, the drummer for The Crickets when the song was written. Allison and Peggy Sue later were married for a bit.
Paul talked about introducing me to her some day. But that never happened. Peggy Sue died in 2018 at the age of 78.
It may be a good thing I never met her. I probably would have just yammered and made a fool of myself.
(Below: The real Peggy Sue.)
I vaguely remember Elvis's death when I was 5 and John Lennon when I was 8.
Strangely mine was Oklahoma's repeal of Prohibition in 1959, which I recall only because my parents voted on opposite sides, my father wet and my mother dry. Neither drank alcohol at the time.