Buddy Holly Archives

It lies to the right of the entrance, a few feet below a knotty, little tree. Many of the gravestones in this old cemetery are bigger, taller, fancier.

But it’s Buddy Holly’s that draws people from thousands of miles away.
Above the flat, marble marker, fans have assembled an odd shrine – on a recent winter day, a bouquet of faded artificial flowers and a pair of matted, stuffed animals rested there, along with a British coin, a homemade pin, a CD, rosaries. And, of course, guitar picks. A sign near the cemetery’s entrance explains the picks are left behind to signal “the music lives on.”

Buddy Holly’s gravestone is one of hundreds of thousands in the City of Lubbock Cemetery, a sprawling but hard to find plot on the east side of his birth city. Warehouses and railroad tracks splice 31st Street, which leads to the historic cemetery, one of the state’s largest.

Finding the rock n’ roll star’s simple monument in the labyrinth of gravestones – the oldest from 1892 – is less a challenge since city workers installed a wooden sign that points to it. Still, some pass by, expecting a towering thing, considering Holly’s iconic status in the world of music, said Bob Goodwin, the manager of the cemetery.

“People think that Elvis Presley has such a huge grave site. They are thinking Buddy deserves something of equal size,” Goodwin said.

The monument of fellow rockabilly star Elvis is in Graceland.

Placed near a water fountain, it features an 18-line, emotional inscription from his family.

Holly’s inconspicuous marker was born of blend of circumstances and family wishes, explains a man with first-hand knowledge.

Man who made the gravestone

Jim Sadler, a 73-year-old who lives in the town of Slaton, about 16 miles southeast of Lubbock, cut the gravestone, giving it a slightly off-kilter tilt so his partner, John Dwyer, could engrave Holly’s signature electric guitar – a Fender Stratocaster – on the right side of the stone.

Holly’s parents, Lawrence and Ella Holley (Buddy stopped using the ‘e’ in his surname after it was misspelled on a record contract), purchased the gravestone in the early ’60s, a few years after their son died in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, Sadler said. Today, their gravestones can be found next to Holly’s. They died years after their famous son.

“His mother and daddy was very nice people, real easy to work with,” Sadler remembered from an office in his home.

The Holleys brought Buddy’s guitar to Lubbock Monument Works, the now-dissolved business where Sadler made a living for about 25 years, so employees could use it as a template for Holly’s gravestone design. Dwyer did so, and added holly leaves on the left side and musical notes on the top of the stone.

Dwyer, in his 80s, lives in a residence for seniors in San Angelo and cannot hear well. His second wife, Elita, said Dwyer “had pretty free rein” in designing the stone.

Gravestone restrictions

But the city of Lubbock cemetery had gravestone restrictions in those days. Upright monuments were not allowed in the section where Holly is buried, Sadler said. The parents settled for a flat stone, choosing Georgia Marble, made from hardy rock that can withstand the highly mineralized water used at the city cemetery, Sadler said.

The monument probably cost $225; today, it would cost more than $1,000, Sadler estimated.

Sadler established his own monument-making business in 1988. Monuments of all shapes and sizes, and a couple of untouched, craggy rocks, cover his front lawn. His wife and daughter-in-law answer phones and review paperwork in the office, a room in his modest brick house. Monuments are shaped in a shed next door.

“I can’t remember being nervous. It was just a job,” Sadler said of his role in making Holly’s monument.

“(Holly) is more famous today than he was then,” added his wife, Paula.

Sadler’s tie to Holly is little known, his family says. Customers usually find out when they leaf through a photo album of Sadler monuments. They’re almost always curious to learn more, Paula said.

“I think it’s exciting that we – I say we, but it wasn’t really me – that Jim had something to do with his monument,” she said.

Despite its size, the monument is impressive, some say.

“Most people kind of like it, I think, because it has such a nice rendition of the Stratocaster guitar,” Goodwin, the cemetery manager, said.

“Over at Buddy’s grave it just felt so weird to be standing there. Buddy Holly,” wrote an anonymous fan who reviewed his trip to the gravestone at www.yelp.com.

“I had a very special experience here when I came to pay my respects to Rock’s greatest figure,” wrote another. “I was able to converse with staff working at the cemetery and they were very kind and helpful … . They were proud of their town and also fans of Buddy. I hear that fans leave behind guitar picks, I opted for yellow roses.”