Still a Role Model

There will be dancing in the streets throughout Los Angeles come March when Ritchie Valens is at long last inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.

In Pacoima, the dancing has already started. The announcement of the 2001 inductees last week ended a 14-year effort to win this hometown legend the recognition he so richly deserves.

Richard Steven Valenzuela grew up in the same Pacoima house where Ernestine Reyes, the aunt who helped raise him, still lives. At 13, he took his guitar with him everywhere, including to Pacoima Junior High School, where he would sit in the bleachers and entertain his classmates. By 17, he was crisscrossing the country on tour, with five singles on the charts and one, “Donna,” in the top 10.

Just five months after that first hit, he was gone, killed in the 1959 plane crash that also took the lives of Buddy Holly and J.P. “‘The Big Bopper” Richardson.

But even after death, Ritchie Valens’ star kept rising. More than 40 years later, his influence continues, both in music and--as the first Latino rock musician to win national acclaim--as a role model.

His hometown named a park and a music festival after him. A movie was made about his life. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His picture is on on a postage stamp. His 1958 recording of the William Clauson song “La Bamba” was recently named by National Public Radio as one of the century’s 100 most significant songs.

Valens has been eligible for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame since the hall was created in 1986. Explanations for his being passed over year after year ranged from the briefness of his career to an East Coast bias against West Coast musicians.

Family members, neighbors, musicians, fans and Pacoima’s congressman, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Mission Hills), waged a campaign to let the nominating committee in New York know just how wrong it was.

On March 19, Valens will take his rightful place alongside such other legendary ‘50s rockers as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Holly.

He already has his place in American music history.

Party on, Pacoima.