R.I.P.: Buddy Holly's Peggy Sue Dead at 78

Peggy Sue Gerron

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, according to lubbockonline.com.

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.

Peggy Sue class photo

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.”

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.

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.