Buddy Holly, second from right, is pictured in his Lubbock boyhood neighborhood with his family, from left, mother Ella, father L.O., Buddy and friend Jack Neal.

There is an irresistible attraction about the sites in the Lubbock area where Buddy Holly used to walk before he became a legend.

Now, visitors to Lubbock from around the world start at the Buddy Holly Center at 1801 Crickets Ave., before extending their nostalgic search around town.

The church

He was born in Lubbock Sept. 7, 1936, and while growing up attended the Tabernacle Baptist Church with his family.

The church was located at 15th Street and Avenue N, near the downtown sector, and didn’t move to 1911 34th St. until 1955. It was the site of his funeral services on Feb. 7, 1959.

The schools

In school, Buddy Holly may have been a typical first-grader. A report card from Roscoe Wilson Elementary, 25th Street and Elgin Avenue, contained a note from his teacher: “Buddy bothers his neighbors in school.”

He was a performer of sorts as early as his attendance at Roosevelt School, which is located about four miles north of Ransom Canyon. The school’s yearbook featured Buddy and Barbara Denning as King and Queen of the Sixth Grade.

This plaque outside of Roscoe Wilson Elementary School commemorates Buddy Holly's days attending the school.

Buddy wasn’t afraid to single out a teacher for special honor, even if the praise may have been dubious.

At Hutchinson Junior High, located at 31st Street and Canton Avenue, he and a friend, Bob Montgomery, performed for a Parents Night program. Their song, dedicated to a particular teacher, was “Too Old to Cut the Mustard.”

He entered Lubbock High School, 19th Street and Avenue T, as a sophomore in 1952, sang in the choir and began thinking of a career in Western music.

The school still has a small exhibit area in the main hallway that includes Buddy Holly memorabilia.

Other sites

His penchant for playing energetic music with friends contributed to the eventual informal naming of the Buddy Holly Recreation Area. It is located about half a mile north of U.S. 84, and just to the west of University Avenue in a part of the Canyon Lakes system.

According to family tradition, Buddy’s guitar sessions with friends were noisy, and to spare parents’ nerves, they took their music to a tin barn in what is now known as the Buddy Holly Recreation Area.

Buddy performed for about a year at the American Legion Youth Center, which was located at Second Street and University Avenue.

After the Crickets band was formed, the group performed at the Village Theater, located at 2329 34th St.

Performances also took place at the Cotton Club, which at the time was in operation on East 50th Street and Southeast Drive.

He opened for such rising stars as Bill Haley and Elvis Presley at the Panhandle-South Plains Fairgrounds, 10th Street and Avenue A.

At the time of his stellar hit, “That’ll Be the Day,” Holly and his family lived at 1305 37th St. The home, though no longer owned by the family, is still there and clearly marked with the address. The Buddy Holly Center administrators ask visitors to simply drive by.

Buddy recorded music, as did Roy Orbison and Waylon Jennings, at Norman Petty Recording Studio, 1313 W. Seventh St. in Clovis, N.M., a 90-minute drive northwest of Lubbock on U.S. 84 (see pages 16-18).

But the site that best brings all of the Buddy Holly story together is the point of beginning: The Buddy Holly Center, where a time line traces his career, and where the main gallery is shaped like a guitar.

Visitors have come to Lubbock not only from states across the nation, but from countries around the globe. It’s easy to find signatures from England, where Buddy Holly once spent a month on a tour credited with influencing that country’s popular music for a generation.

The center held a grand opening event in 1999 to recognize a combining of the Buddy Holly Museum with the Lubbock Fine Arts Center into a single building that in the 1930s was the Fort Worth & Denver South Plains Railway Depot.

Jacqueline Bober, curator, said the center has a large gallery that is devoted to the life and legacy of Buddy Holly.

“We have memorabilia in that gallery, and a timeline that looks at his life pretty much from birth to death,” she said. “That was only 22 years, but we have things from his childhood – marbles he played with, crayons he drew with. And we have some of his drawings – he was quite proficient in his drawings of horses.”

“We also have some of his report cards, and his Cub Scout uniform,” she said.

Then there are the things he is known for internationally:

“His music, his love of music,” she said. “He performed very early on with Jack Neal and Bob Montgomery. Buddy and Jack had a show on one of the early radio stations. Then, when Jack left, Bob Montgomery came in, so it was the Buddy and Bob Show.

“We have collections of his records that he enjoyed listening to – gospel music, blues, Ray Charles, Bob Wills, Hank Williams. And also some of his own records that he himself had made.”

The two identifying objects that are most symbolic of Buddy Holly on the international performance stage are there also. They are his Fender electric guitar, which was sent on ahead by bus to the concert he was on his way to when his plane crashed Feb. 3, 1959; and his signature eye glasses that he had with him on the plane.

Bober said an overnight bag he carried on the plane also is in the gallery.

Other items from his career are a part of the collection.

“Buddy wrote a lot of his own music, and J.I. Allison, his drummer, contributed.,” she said. “We have a little lyric book where they worked out the lyrics of their songs together. There are some drawings and words written in there by J.I. Allison where they were working out the name of their band.”

The Buddy Holly Center also houses the Lubbock Fine Arts Center, which has a variety of art exhibits each year in its gallery in the west side of the building.

“We also have the Texas Musicians Hall of Fame, which at some point we hope to develop into a permanent exhibit. Right now we do music-related and Buddy Holly-related temporary exhibitions in there,” said Bober.

“We have done a show on Wayland Jennings in there at one time, with the hope that eventually we will be collecting memorabilia and information about the different artists who were well known in the West Texas region,” she said.

The center also has a gift shop, which not surprisingly has Buddy Holly music CDs and a variety of other items.

A small projection room has a 20-minute film narrating the career of Buddy Holly, and it runs continuously.

The former train station seems a fitting building for music, art and Buddy Holly. It houses the reminders of a local legend, yet has become a stopping place for travelers from around the world.