Tuesday, October 24, 2000:

Note: This story is from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal archives. The story is a complete reprint from the original news feature. This web posting ©2001-2002, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. For more information about copyrights, view our web site.

From Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, September 5, 1998

LaDonna Gatlin, right, shares a laugh with long-time friend Randy Edwards at the Buddy Holly Music Festival Mayor's kickoff luncheon. Gatlin and Edwards grew up living on the same street in Odessa. They would also spend Thanksgiving at their respecitive grandmothers, who lived across the street from each other in Olney, Texas. They hadn't seen each other in 30 years. JAMES GRANGER/Staff Photographer

Luncheon kicks off festival Mayor announces center's opening

By WILLIAM KERNS
A-J Entertainment Editor

The Buddy Holly Music Festival/Mayor's Kickoff Luncheon, attended Friday by several hundred corporate employees and a tour group from England and Scotland, actually served as a celebratory kickoff for the 1999 opening of the Buddy Holly Center in the Depot District.

This weekend's music festival opened Thursday with a West Texas Walk of Fame induction and the premiere performance of ''Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story'' at the Cactus Theater.

However, Friday's luncheon found Mayor Windy Sitton announcing that the ribbon-cutting and grand opening for the Buddy Holly Center, which also will serve as a new home for the Lubbock Fine Arts Center, will take place ''one year from today'' in the building most recently operated as The Depot Restaurant at 18th Street and Avenue G.

Sept. 4, 1999, is a Saturday.

''We are so fortunate to have (Buddy Holly as) a native son,'' said Sitton, ''and it's about time we caught on out here. I support marketing this great city any way I can, and I don't know any better way than to use the Buddy Holly legacy.''

Accepting the spotlight at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center's Banquet Hall at 12:15 p.m. Friday, Sitton expressed admiration for native Lubbock singer-songwriters Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, both of whom were inducted Thursday in the Walk of Fame surrounding the Holly statue.

Sitton said, ''Realizing that they are known around the world made me think. Why in the world can't Lubbock, Texas, be the musical capital of Texas? Yes, we have to dream big. But I'm for doing that. ... I don't think I ever realized the musical heritage of Lubbock, Texas, until I moved here.''

She feels that the opening of the Buddy Holly Center will help focus statewide, national and international attention on Lubbock.

Motivational speaker and vocalist La Donna Gatlin, younger sister of former country recording act The Gatlin Brothers, was the featured guest at the luncheon, delivering songs, jokes and personal testimony for approximately 45 minutes.

The Odessa-raised Gatlin Brothers - Larry, Steve and Rudy - were inducted into the West Texas Walk of Fame in Lubbock in 1990 with the late Bob Wills, of Turkey.

La Donna Gatlin sang a number of songs to tapes of prerecorded music, including a gospel song featuring her brothers, and offered a couple of political jabs by dedicating Olivia Newton-John's ''Let Me Be There in the Morning'' to Monica Lewinsky and Tammy Wunette's ''Stand By Your Man'' to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

She also performed a parody, singing ''God Bless Mary Kay'' to music written for Lee Greenwood's ''God Bless the USA.''

Gatlin, 44, mentioned that she faced ''a crossroad'' 20 years ago when she told her brothers that she wanted to marry and raise a family rather than sing country music. This was shortly after she sang harmony on ''She's a Broken Lady,'' for which The Gatlins earned a Grammy Award.

She indicated that she ''had her own song to sing,'' and later became a motivational speaker, taking her words and music across the country, from the Grand Ole Opry to ''prison cells on Death Row.''

Her personal song, she indicated, is ''Amazing Grace,'' but she told those present, ''You have your own song to sing and you sing it every day: through your words, through your deeds, through your actions, in short, through your life.''

In closing, she compared the work necessary for the Gatlins to excel at harmonies to the harmony of those who are working together in an effort to ''put Lubbock on the map.''

Dallas-based nostalgia band The Rankins opened the proceedings at 11:30 a.m. Friday with a 45-minute selection of older songs ranging from 1950s Buddy holly tunes to a 1960s hit by The Monkees.