In 2009 (on the 50th anniversary of the airplane crash), Don McLean wrote an editorial for CNN.com that told of his learning of it the following morning:  “Buddy [Holly]’s death, for me, an impressionable 13-year-old, delivering papers, was an enormous tragedy.  The cover photo of the posthumously released [The] Buddy Holly Story and The Buddy Holly Story, Vol. 2, coupled with liner notes written by his widow, Maria [Santiago-Holly], created a sense of grief that lived inside of me, until I was able to exorcize it with the opening verse of ‘American Pie’.” 

(June 2013/1)