Historic Buddy Holly Concert Photos Unveiled

CLEAR LAKE, IA--Nearly a half century after they were taken, some historic photos will be put on display at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake.

Mary Gerber of Walters, Minnesota was 16 years old when she last attended a show at the Surf.

The show happened to also be the last performance of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens before they died in a plane crash hours afterward.

Gerber snapped 7 photos and kept the negatives all these years.

Then she saw an ad in the Albert Lea newspaper about someone offering a reward for photos from the February 2, 1959 show.

She contacted the producers of a documentary on the Winter Dance Party Tour of 1959.

Prints of the snapshots were unveiled during a special ceremony Thursday night at the Surf.

One of them shows Holly playing drums for Dion and the Belmonts.

The musicians on the tour were forced to improvise when drummer Carl Bunch got frost bite feet during an earlier stop in Wisconsin.

Gerber said, "I just felt after 50 years they should be shared, and I thought I'm not going to live another 50 years, so somebody else should see them.

She gave a set of them to guitarist Tommy Allsup who was on the 1959 tour and lost his seat on the plane to Valens over a coin flip.

Gerber also gave a set of the photos to Valens' sisters on Wednesday.

"I figured they would probably mean a lot to the family to see the last pictures but not of them have been of the last night,  I'm gonna start crying, I just felt glad."

Gerber said she remembered not seeing any other flash bulbs going off at the show and wondered why.

She remembers getting her answer on the way out of the show.

Gerber saw a sign she'd missed earlier, it read "no cameras allowed."

Starting Friday Gerber's photos will go on display in the Surf's lobby.