Bourbonnais author in pursuit of Buddy Holly

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

There’s some wordy turbulence in Gary W. Moore’s memoir Hey Buddy: In Pursuit of Buddy Holly, My New Buddy John and My Lost Decade of Music, but Chicago area references and conspiracy theories make it a thoroughly fun read.

Moore, 56, is a resident of Bourbonnais, Ill., and is not to be confused with the Thin Lizzy guitarist of the same name. He grew up a fan of Big Band jazz and was not familiar with Holly until he began the book project in February 2010.

This would be like me writing a memoir on the Wu Tang Clan.

Holly perished with the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens and pilot Roger Peterson in a Feb. 3, 1959, plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa.

Moore is also a pilot. His 78-year-old mother-in-law, Norma Wurster Wugant Jackson, is a Holly fan, which is where Moore’s journey begins.

By taking Norma to a Holly tribute concert last February in Cedar Falls, Iowa, Moore met Holly impersonator John Mueller, who wrote the song “Hey Buddy,” which changed Moore’s life.

Moore later met Stacey Cisneros, the 36-year-old Head of Adult Services at the Batavia Public Library. She grew up near the Iowa crash site and told Moore how Holly played lead and rhythm guitar on “Peggy Sue.”

Moore also connected with former WLS-AM disc jockey Bob Hale, who was the mid- morning man on a Mason City, Iowa, radio station the day after the crash. Hale also hosted Holly’s last concert at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake.

The best part of the 215-page book is where Moore reports conspiracy theories about the gun Holly carried on the plane. Jerry Dwyer, owner-operator of the charter service where Holly and his entourage boarded the plane, is now 92 and owns pieces of the wreckage. He did not talk to Moore.

Hey Buddy even has an addendum interview with Don McLean, who wrote the smash hit “American Pie,” about Holly and “The Day the Music Died.”

All this makes for a book that is crazy good.

For example, here’s part of Moore’s intro to the plane crash chapter (with seven detailed pictures of wreckage): “As they say in Sesser, Illinois, we are attracted to tragic events ‘like June bugs to a porch light.’ And yet, the very nature that attracts us to tragedy often encourages us to discount logic and fact and refuse to accept that it happened ... as it did.”

Moore is also the author of Playing with the Enemy: A Baseball Prodigy, World War II and the Long Journey Home (Savas Beatie, 2006), which last week won the Jerome Holtzman award for significant contribution to the promotion of Chicago baseball and the preservation of history and tradition by the Chicago Baseball Museum and the Pitch & Hit Club of Chicago. Moore is also president of the Praragon Heritage Group, an insurance marketing organization.

‘Haunted’ by a song

“The Buddy Holly story chose me,” Moore said earlier this week from his home in Bourbonnais. “It wasn’t something I was looking for. The only thing my mother-in-law wanted for her birthday was to go to a Buddy Holly impersonator concert. I was certain I would hate it. I knew there was a movie about Buddy Holly that I hadn’t seen. I knew one song: ‘Peggy Sue.’ The concert was great but it didn’t excite me until the very last song.”

That’s when Mueller sang “Hey Buddy.”

“The song seized my mind and heart in a way I still can’t explain,” said Moore, who also has contributed to the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series. “I had tears on my face. My wife asked what was wrong with me and I said I didn’t know.”

Moore reprints Mueller’s lyrics in the book. The song makes liberal use of Holly song titles, here in quotes. It begins:

“... Hey, Buddy ... ‘Look at Me,’ ‘I’m just sittin’ here ‘Reminiscing’

And I know your ‘Words of Love’ will ‘Not Fade Away’

But something’s still missing

‘Well Alright’, but ‘It’s So Easy’ to feel this way

I start ‘Wishing’ you were here but I know ‘That’ll Be The Day’...”

Moore said, “The more I learned about Buddy the more I liked him: his deep faith and anti-drinking, anti-drug approach. The thing that kept driving me is that I totally didn’t understand it. I’d lay in bed at night and couldn’t let go of it. It was almost like being haunted.”

Still on the Holly case

Although the book is finished, Moore is still hoping to see the plane wreckage.

“We’re going to push pretty hard,” he said. “Radio stations are starting petitions to get the Dwyers to release this wreckage. Everybody says the Dwyers are outstanding people, and I don’t want to rock their boat. Buddy’s brothers are still living. His wife is still living. They are defiantly claiming the truth has never been told. And the truth is still in that plane.

“I’ve got a retired NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] investigator who is eager to help. I had an air charter company in Kankakee. I had the same position Jerry Dwyer had. Buddy’s [1947] plane was a high-performance airplane fully loaded to its weight capacity in bad weather and a terribly inexperienced and unqualified pilot.

“I understand the pressures of paying for the planes and fuel. Jerry knew that if he canceled the flight that night he was going to lose money. Evidence that he knew better is he was there to load that plane. It was record cold, like 17 below zero. [Holly’s drummer was already in the hospital with frostbite from riding in the unheated tour bus.] Jerry stood outside and watched the plane for five minutes. Why would a man do that if he wasn’t worried? Everything that I’ve read says he has no regret. I was told that around 1980, he told Flying magazine he wanted to cut up the plane and sell it for keychains. The Buddy Holly estate went nuts, and from that point he said he’d never talk to a reporter again.”

The coin-flip story about who got to board the plane also has taken on a life of its own.

“Everybody believes the Big Bopper asked Waylon Jennings [of Holly’s band] for his seat on the plane because he had the flu and wanted to see a doctor,” Moore said. “Waylon gave up his seat. Ritchie Valens asked [guitarist] Tommy Allsup for his seat because he had never flown before. Tommy didn’t want to give it up, so Ritchie said let’s flip a coin. Tommy pulled out a coin, and depending on how you look at it, Ritchie won. I guess he really lost.

“Since then, Dion, from Dion and the Belmonts, in the last 10 years has claimed he flipped the coin. Now Bob Hale claims he absolutely flipped it. I just decided to not put it in the book. There’s three people claiming to have flipped that coin.”

Gary W. Moore will be at the annual “Winter Dance Party”at the Surf Ballroom & Museum on Feb. 5 in Clear Lake, Iowa. Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Head are scheduled to appear at the Feb. 5 ballroom concert; other activities include a screening of “La Bamba” (the Ritchie Valens story) and a memorial site tour. (Information: 641-357-6151; surfballroom.com. ) Moore will discuss and sign copies of his book at 7 p.m. Feb. 16 at the Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln.