Peggy Sue Gerron, inspiration for Buddy Holly song, dies in Lubbock

Peggy Sue Gerron, who will be forever remembered in association with Buddy Holly because of his song bearing her name, died early Monday at University Medical Center in Lubbock.

She was 78.

Friends in Texas and New Mexico, who particularly knew her as a ham radio enthusiast, remember how fascinated she would be in talking to people she had never met from around the world.

Doug Hutton of Lubbock, who also is an amateur radio operator, said he was one of her friends who helped her get her radio license a decade or so ago.

Bryan Edwards, now living in New Mexico after operating the business called Edwards Electronics in Lubbock, said, "Peggy Sue was always just plain good to people."

Hutton didn't remember Peggy Sue from high school.

"She was three years younger than I am," he said. But he knew her later as a ham radio buff.

"For several years, we had an event every year where it would be publicized within the ham radio community so that people would get on a certain frequency and talk to Peggy Sue," he said. "That was a great thrill to those people to talk to her."

Gerron, an Olton native, went to Lubbock High, where she met and dated Jerry “J.I” Allison, who along with Holly was a founding member of the Crickets, according to A-J Media archives.

Her namesake song, which went to No. 3 on the charts for Holly in 1957, was originally titled "Cindy Lou" after Holly's niece, according to A-J Media archives. The title was changed to "Peggy Sue" - then Allison's girlfriend - after the couple were briefly broken up.

Gerron and Allison were married through much of the 60s, but later divorced. Gerron went on to Pasadena Junior College in Pasadena, California, becoming a dental assistant. She would re-marry and had two children and multiple grand-children.

“Balancing home with career, she helped her new husband establish a very successful plumbing business and even became the first licensed woman plumber in California,” according to website peggysueonline.com “When the San Francisco earthquake hit in 1989, her plumbing company volunteered the cameras, some of the first ones to be used in plumbing in that area, to check for blockages to go into collapsed areas to look for trapped people.”

The bio on her website states that, in 1978, when the movie, “The Buddy Holly Story” staring Gary Busey came out, “people began asking about whatever had happened to Peggy Sue. Magazines and TV shows were once again interested in the girl behind the song.”

“In 1986, Hollywood tapped into the fame of ‘Peggy Sue’ by adapting Buddy’s ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’ song into a feature film starring Kathleen Turner,” the bio reads.

Edwards remembers that he knew Peggy Sue from Lubbock High School, and in recent years she had asked him about ham radio. "She said, 'Ive always wanted to be a ham.'

"At the time, I thought it was just a passing comment. Then she said, 'I want to get a ham license.'

"A couple of other guys and I started helping Peggy, and the result was that she got a ham radio license. In the mid-1990s, we decided we wanted to have a special event station commemorating Lubbock and Buddy Holly, and Peggy would always take a very active part in that. She would come over to my house and spend hours talking to people on the special events station. We might talk to from 1,000 to 1,500 people all around the world during the time commemorating Buddy Holly.

"Peggy would be the one who would be talking to people, and it was fascinating for her to tell stories to those people. When they would mention an association with Buddy Holly, she would immediately have a fantastic comeback. She would share with people from all over the world — it was a really great time."

Randy Steele of Austin, recalls a music festival 10 years ago in Clovis, New Mexico, when he gave flowers to Peggy Sue on Sept. 7, 2008, then drove 515 miles to Austin, and found an email waiting for him:

She had written in the email, "I wanted to thank you for the roses and tell you that I took them to Buddy's grave on the very day when I got home. Sept. 7, of course, is his birthday, and Clovis was so wonderful this year that I thought that this closed the circle of love.

"It was not just another festival, it was a spiritual blessing for all."