Nostalgia Buffs Said That’ll Be the Day--and It Was

--The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, echoed with classic rock ‘n’ roll on the 30th anniversary of a plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and two other music legends who had just played there. Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. (Big Bopper) Richardson died on Feb. 3, 1959, when their plane crashed in rough winter weather after they left for Fargo, N.D. About 2,000 fans, some from as far away as Britain, braved similar snow, high winds and subzero temperatures to attend the 11th annual Buddy Holly reunion. Larry Fennigaoh of Milwaukee, who wore a tuxedo, white socks and black sneakers to the hop, said: “I liked Buddy Holly even better than Elvis.” The party-goers, many of the women in poodle skirts and saddle shoes, many of the men in T-shirts with rolled sleeves, filed past a 30-year-old Mason City Globe-Gazette that featured photographs of the crash. A six-foot tombstone carrying the names of the dead and the epitaph “Their Music Lives On” stands just inside the entrance, and the ballroom is lined with likenesses of Holly, who was 22 when he died but had a string of hits such as “Peggy Sue,” “It’s So Easy” and “That’ll Be the Day.” Barbara Rau, from Hawthorne, N.J., said his music “never grows old; it’s timeless.”

--Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, daughter of actress Rita Hayworth, wed real estate developer Christopher Michael Jeffries in a private ceremony at her Central Park West apartment in New York. About 350 guests were invited to a high-society reception afterward at the Plaza Hotel, including Patricia Hearst Shaw, Donald and Ivana Trump, U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) and author Jerzy Kosinski. Barons and countesses appeared frequently on the guest list. Khan’s father was Prince Aly Khan, one of Hayworth’s five husbands. This is the second marriage each for the princess, 39, and for Jeffries, 38.

--Harper Hospital in Detroit released civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks in time for her to celebrate her 76th birthday with her friends. She had entered the hospital after suffering chest pains last week, but results of the tests, including one for blocked arteries, were negative, a hospital spokeswoman said. Doctors said the stress of her heavy schedule during Black History Month may have caused the pains, and they suggested that she limit her appearances. Parks is noted for her refusal in December, 1955, to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala.