It was an even more poignant a moment than I expected.   For the first time, Maria Elena Holly, “the widowed bride” immortalized in Don Maclean’s America Pie, returned to the very spot where Buddy Holly proposed to her on June 20, 1958.  “I only wish that Buddy had lived to see this,” she said while choking back tears.  “You know, the music never died and it never will.”

The moment, which will help to ensure that the music won’t die, occurred on April 29 at PJ Clarke’s restaurant in New York City.    Maria Elena sat at the same table where she and Buddy dined on their first date.  In the middle of the meal, Buddy excused himself and returned moments later with a single rose and asked her to marry him.  “It really was love at first sight,” Maria Elena said.  There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when Maria Elena then unveiled a previously unpublished wedding day photograph which is now permanently mounted on the wall by that historic table.

I got to do my small part in preserving Holly’s legacy when, on behalf of the Buddy Holly Guitar Foundation, I presented the Foundation’s “True Love Ways” guitar to Peter Asher.  Through technological trickery, Asher then sang Holly’s that song with his duo partner, Gordon Waller, who died in 2009.  While Gordon sang lead on a huge video screen, Peter sang harmony and played his Foundation guitar, and Maria Elena beamed and wiped tears from her eyes.