20 AMERICAN BLUES THEATER Sheriff Jerry Allen of Cerro Gordo County, Iowa, was combing through a storage vault in a courthouse basement on February 29, 1980 when he came across an envelope. It was from the coroner's office and read, "Charles Hardin Holley, rec'd April 7, 1959." Allen opened it and found a pair of black-framed angular eyeglasses, the lenses scratched. The sheriff instantly connected them to the most famous incident to have ever happened in that rural patch: "The Day the Music Died." On February 3, 1959, a charter flight carrying musicians Buddy Holly, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, and Ritchie Valens to a tour stop crashed into a cornfield outside Mason City, Iowa. The crash killed all three early rock stars and the pilot, Roger Peterson. Besides Holly's glasses, the envelope discovered by Sheriff Allen also contained some dice, a cigarette lighter, and two wristwatches, one engraved with the name "J.P. Richardson"—The Big Bopper's real name. The watch still ran "quite well," Allen told a reporter for United Press International a few weeks later. "I cranked it up." When first responders scoured the crash site in 1959, they collected personal effects, which were sent to the victims' families. Allen speculated that the leftover items were flung from the plane and found by a farmer two months later, when the snow melted. The coroner's office collected and then misplaced them in the process of moving to a new county courthouse. The envelope spent 21 years in a locked steel cabinet in a storage vault. The glasses were Buddy Holly's trademark. The Texas- born singer had 20/800 vision and couldn't read the top line of the eye chart as a boy, though he initially went spec-less at gigs, thinking glasses would hurt his image. According to Texas Monthly, that changed after an early show where he dropped his guitar pick THE STRANGE CASE OF BUDDY HOLLY’S FINAL PAIR OF GLASSES By Nick Keppler Originally published February 27, 2016 Buddy Holly’s glasses on display in Lubbock, Texas Buddy Holly in 1958