After Buddy Holly died in a plane crash in 1959, Ronnie Smith was flown to Iowa from Texas to sing Holly’s songs for the remainder of a rock & roll tour through the upper Midwest. Instead of being a springboard to success, Smith’s life took a mysterious downturn. I learned about Smith while researching my book on that tour. I managed to track down his sole surviving relative and, after much coaxing, persuaded her to let me tell his compelling story. This is excerpted from the book, The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, ©1997 by Larry Lehmer.

Ronnie Smith’s Story

Ronnie Smith expected to be a star when he returned to Odessa after the Winter Dance Party.

So did some of the people he met on tour.

"He was terrific," says Dion.

Waylon Jennings said: "He could have been a star. He was a real good-lookin' kid and knew how to move with the music. ... He knew what he was doing."

"I thought Ronnie would come home and we'd be rich," said Smith's sister, Sherry. It didn't happen quite that way.
Smith's Brunswick recording, Lookie Lookie Lookie/A Tiny Kiss, sold fairly well in 1959, but failed to make the national charts.

Still, he made enough money to buy a white 1959 Impala with a red interior, a car that stood out on the streets of Odessa.

After subsequent recordings sold poorly, Smith enrolled in the Hollywood Professional School in California where his classmates included Mousketeers Sharon Baird and Carl "Cubby" O'Brien, actors Lauren Chapin and Tommy Nolan, the Addrisi brothers and Mickey and Timmy Rooney. At a class dinner, Smith drew rave reviews for his singing.

But Smith had problems more serious than a sagging career in 1960. Drugs had taken control of his life, particularly glue sniffing. His family tried to get Ronnie back on track.

But in 1960, there were few options for people with chemical dependency problems.

“I think that was the frustrating part,” Sherry Smith said. “He just couldn’t help it and he needed some help.”
Smith was treated at private hospitals in Odessa and Galveston before the family ran out of money. Despite the treatment, Smith was not getting better. The family committed him to the state hospital in Big Spring.

At Big Spring, Smith got worse.

"He was good at getting out. He escaped," Sherry Smith said. "Lots of times he'd jump boxcars [or] he'd ride the couplings [65 miles to Odessa]."

After he was returned to Big Spring following his escapes, Smith was given electro-shock treatments.

"Those were horrible," Sherry Smith said. "He acted like he'd just come out of surgery most of the time."

The shock treatments just sent Smith on an emotional roller coaster, according to his sister.

"He had some real highs and lows," Sherry Smith said.

When it was apparent that Smith could not be contained at Big Spring, he was moved to another state hospital in Rusk, in southeast Texas.

At Rusk, the family was allowed to visit Smith every two weeks. Smith's mother would take food and cigarettes to her son.

"Mother got to where she'd take food to other people," Sherry Smith said. "She'd take them cigarettes and candy and Ronnie would share them with other people who didn't have visitors.

"I remember Ronnie telling me one time [as] we were just walking around, 'If you weren't crazy when you came in, you'd be crazy when you left.'"

On Thursday morning, Oct. 25, 1962, some friends at Rusk invited Smith to play in a softball game.

"He said 'I'm just going to use the bathroom and I'll be out in a second,'" Sherry Smith says. "And then he didn't come out."

A hospital employee found Smith dead, hanging by his t-shirt. He was buried in Sunset Memorial Gardens cemetery near Odessa on Oct. 28, 1962.

About a month before his death, Smith had handed his mother a box of his belongings for safekeeping "in case something happens." In the box were the words to a song Smith had written at Rusk, It Was the Master Calling Me. The family had the words engraved on his tombstone:

"Alone and afraid
I watched the sunlight fade.
And then I turned and slowly walked away.

And then I heard a voice
calling my name
and when I turned to look,
I just bowed my head in shame.

His voice so gentle and kind
He came to me and took my hand
and healed my troubled mind.

No words can ever describe
The peace I felt inside
Now all my fear is gone
And I will never walk alone
It was the master calling me."

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