Another Victim

I read  in the Fargo Forum Alzheimer's has claim another victim.  Bobby Vee,  or to the locals: Bobby Velline.  He is a Fargo boy who did good.  Who can forget "Come Back When You Grow Up Girl" or "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes?"

His big break came when a plane crash killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper.  On a snowy night,  February 3, 1959, their Beechcraft airplane went down near Clear Lake, Iowa-killing everyone aboard.  The day the music died.

Bobby Vee, at the ripe old age of 15, and his band, The Shadows, quickly covered for the missing musicians at the Moorhead Minnesota Armory.  The rest is history.

I was too young to be in the audience that winter night, but as I grew up  the Bobby Vee  story became part of the lore, one more antecedent we Fargoans treasure as our own.

Last summer when dining with the friends in Vergas Minnesota at Billy's Corner Bar, Bobby Vee was there with his wife, enjoying life like the rest of us.  The was BDD or before the dreaded diagnosis. But I guess the signs are there long before the doc lays it out in plain English.  Stories  say he has known for awhile, but now has decided to go public.  He has become one more victim of the cruel disease.    His wife, of forty-eight years, is awaiting a lung transplant.