One of the twins from famous Buddy Holly photo taken at 1959 Winter Dance Party at Riverside Ballroom dies at 84
One of the identical twins who posed with Buddy Holly in a famous 1959 photo taken at the Riverside Ballroom has died.
Joan Matti passed away Aug. 14 in Rothschild, according to her obituary. She was 84.
She was Joan Bender when she and her sister, Judy Bender, traveled from their hometown of Wausau as teens to see Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson ("The Big Bopper") in Green Bay for a Feb. 1 stop on the 1959 Winter Dance Party. As vocal duo The Jayettes, the twins often performed locally with The Runabouts, a five-piece band that featured Joan's future husband, Larry Matti, on saxophone.
Both acts had opened for Holly & The Crickets when the band played the Rothschild Pavilion on July 12, 1958. Runabouts drummer Bob Oestreich was able to get the girls backstage at the Riverside, where Matti, an amateur photographer, took a dozen color photos of the acts that night, including one of the twins on either side of a smiling Holly.
Roughly 30 hours later, Holly, Valens and Richardson would be dead. The plane that was to take them from their show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, on Feb. 2 to the next date in Moorhead, Minnesota, crashed in a farm field just six miles after takeoff in the early hours of Feb. 3, killing all three and the pilot.
It became known as "The Day the Music Died," as immortalized in Don McLean's hit song "American Pie."
The tragic turn of events made the photos from that night at the Riverside Ballroom, "the Matti photos" as they have become known in the Holly community, treasured chronicles of rock 'n' roll history.
"There's numerous documentaries that have used those photos. They're considered very iconic photos. At one time they thought they were last photos ever taken of them alive," said Mark Steuer, a Green Bay Winter Dance Party historian and memorabilia collector .
Photos taken at the final show in Clear Lake with Holly & Co. surfaced many years later, but the Green Bay images remain a fascinating and haunting time capsule of the Winter Dance Party.
Joan Matti 'was as nice of a person as you can imagine'
Fascinated by Green Bay's connection to Holly, Steuer first met Joan in 1988 when she and Larry invited him and his wife to come for a visit. He spent four hours on a Sunday in their Wausau kitchen poring over their pictures and memorabilia.
"I was hooked right there. It was like, 'Oh my Lord, look at all this stuff. So many people didn't know about it. I just ran with it," he said.
It was the start of a friendship that lasted 37 years. Steuer made a half-dozen visits to Joan's home over the years, often over a glass of lemonade. He also met up with her several times at the annual Winter Dance Party multi-day celebration in Clear Lake that draws people from all over the world. Joan, who was a nurse, and Larry would come to visit with fans and take photos.
"She was as nice of a person as you can imagine. Just a very sweet, nice lady," Steuer said. "When you were in her company, you just felt welcome."
He recalls how kind Joan was when people would come up to her at Winter Dance Party events. "The Bender twins" were often treated like princesses or queens in Holly circles, Steuer said, but they never made a fuss about it.
"I think they understood the dynamic of history with what happened ... and they weren't too big for it," he said.
Joan is survived by her three children, Lori (James) Speckhard, Todd (Heather) Matti and Lynn Keel, sister Judy (Terry) Oestreich, brother Bucky (Bonnie) Bender and three grandsons. Larry died in 2010.
Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com . Follow her on X @KendraMeinert .
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Twin in iconic Buddy Holly photo taken at 1959 Winter Dance Party dies
