BUDDY - THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY BACKSTAGE GUIDE 21 and had to crawl around on stage searching for it. He still ditched his glasses for his first promotional photos, but he finally found a style of black frames he liked. In a great leap for bespectacled nerds everywhere, Holly managed to make the thick- framed glasses cool. Upon discovering the glasses, Sheriff Allen planned to turn them over to Buddy Holly's parents. However, Holly's widow, Maria Elena Holly, who lost her husband when he was just 22, objected. The parties couldn't come to an agreement and the matter went to court. They weren't the only people who wanted the glasses. According to The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens by Larry Lehmer, Sheriff Allen ignored a Holly fanatic from Delaware who offered $502.37 for the glasses, pleading to Allen that it was his entire life savings. "I'd wish I'd have just put the damn things back and forgotten about them," complained Allen, according to Lehmer. On March 20, 1981, a judge granted the glasses to Maria Elena Holly at the same Mason City courthouse where Allen had discovered them. According to Texas Monthly, she sold them for $80,000 in 1998 to Civic Lubbock, the nonprofit behind the city's Buddy Holly Center, where they are on permanent display. (from Indiana.edu) The Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, Texas A memorial to Buddy Holly near the crash site in Iowa (from MentalFloss.com)