{"id":4984,"date":"2014-06-14T21:33:53","date_gmt":"2014-06-15T02:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4984"},"modified":"2014-06-14T21:33:53","modified_gmt":"2014-06-15T02:33:53","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-june-14-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4984","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour for June 14, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Random Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n

After he separated from the Crickets, Buddy Holly formed a new band that\u00a0included Waylon Jennings, Carl Bunch and Tommie Allsup.\u00a0\u00a0The group, together\u00a0with solo acts J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, Ritchie Valens and Dion Dimucci, embarked\u00a0on a hectic three-week tour called the Winter Dance Party. The grueling\u00a0schedule and poor conditions on the tour bus led to an outbreak of the flu,\u00a0and after the bus’s heater quit, drummer Carl Bunch’s feet became so\u00a0frostbitten that he had to be hospitalized. A schoolbus was obtained, but\u00a0after an impromptu show in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly decided to charter a\u00a0plane. The club manager at their last concert arranged a flight with Dwyer\u00a0Flying Services; 21-year-old pilot Roger Peterson would fly three band\u00a0members to Fargo, North Dakota and the rest of the musicians would meet them\u00a0there to travel to their next gig in Minnesota.\u00a0The Beechcraft Bonanza could carry only three passengers plus the pilot.\u00a0Holly got one seat. Tommy Allsup and Richie Valens flipped a coin for\u00a0another; Allsup lost. Waylon Jennings planned to go too, but Richardson,\u00a0who was sick with the flu, asked to have his seat and Jennings agreed. When\u00a0he heard about the trade, Holly joked to Jennings that “I hope your ol’ bus\u00a0freezes up!” Jennings joked back with “And I hope your ol’ plane crashes!”\u00a0Dion Dimucci had also planned to fly, but decided he didn’t want to pay the\u00a0$36 for a seat. (Equivalent to about $300 in today’s money.)<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The crash scene. The bodies of Buddy Holly (far left), The Big Bopper (in the corn field), and Ritchie Valens (foreground).<\/p><\/div>\n

The plane took off just before one A.M. local time on February 3, 1959. It\u00a0was snowing lightly with a strong wind, and the ceiling was low. Peterson\u00a0did not receive weather briefings which indicated that the weather was going\u00a0to be worse along his flight path. He was also inexperienced and not yet\u00a0fully qualified to fly solely by instrument rather than vision. These\u00a0factors apparently caused him to experience spatial disorientation and to\u00a0think that he was ascending when he was not. The Bonanza crashed into a\u00a0cornfield just six miles from the airport.<\/p>\n

The owner of Dwyer Flying Services, Hubert Dwyer, attempted to establish\u00a0radio contact with Peterson shortly after takeoff but was unable to. Once it\u00a0was light, and there was still no sign of the Bonanza, Dwyer flew up in his\u00a0own Cessna and spotted wreckage. He summoned a sheriff’s deputy to the\u00a0field, and the four bodies were recovered. They had all died on impact.\u00a0Jennings was haunted the rest of his life by his unthinking retort about the\u00a0plane crashing. And the randomness of who ended up on the plane and who\u00a0didn’t must have weighed heavily on the surviving musicians.<\/p>\n

Holly’s young wife, Maria Elena, learned about her husband’s death on TV and\u00a0the shock and grief caused her to miscarry a day later. She also was haunted\u00a0by the fact that she had planned to accompany Buddy on the tour but had\u00a0bowed out due to not feeling well. She said she knew that if she had gone,\u00a0“Buddy would never have gotten on that plane.”<\/p>\n

Culled From: Wikipedia
\nSubmitted by: Aimee<\/a><\/p>\n

A long, long time ago<\/em>
\n I can still remember how that music used to make me smile<\/em>
\n And I knew if I had my chance<\/em>
\n That I could make those people dance<\/em>
\n And maybe they’d be happy for a while<\/em>
\n But February made me shiver<\/em>
\n With every paper I’d deliver<\/em>
\n Bad news on the doorstep<\/em>
\n I couldn’t take one more step<\/em>
\n I can’t remember if I cried<\/em>
\n When I read about his widowed bride<\/em>
\n But something touched me deep inside<\/em>
\n The day the music died<\/em>
\n –Don McLean, “American Pie” \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Random Yet Truly Morbid Fact! After he separated from the Crickets, Buddy Holly formed a new band that\u00a0included Waylon Jennings, Carl Bunch and Tommie Allsup.\u00a0\u00a0The group, together\u00a0with solo acts J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, Ritchie Valens and Dion Dimucci, embarked\u00a0on a hectic three-week tour called the Winter Dance Party. The grueling\u00a0schedule and poor conditions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4986,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4984\/revisions\/4986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}