How do you say goodbye if you never got to say hello?

Get menu, photos and location information for Big Bopper & More in Wellsville, KS. Or book now at one of our other 3122 great restaurants in Wellsville. View the menu for Big Bopper and restaurants in Wellsville, KS. See restaurant menus, reviews, hours, photos, maps and directions.

Jay Richardson was born almost three months after his father J.P. Richardson -- better known as the Big Bopper -- died in a violent Iowa plane crash that also killed 1950s rock stars Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens on 'the day the music died,' Feb. 3, 1959. It was rock 'n' roll's first great tragedy.

By the time little Jay was born, the Bopper was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery here. The odds Jay would ever get to meet his father were, oh, next to never.

But don't bet against history. Or science. Or a son's heart.

Jay met his famously dead father last month, the day the music was exhumed. The Big Bopper came back in the land of the living for one day only.

Months ago, Forest Lawn Cemetery had planned only to quietly move the Bopper's gravesite to a more visible location with a life-size statue and historic marker, but the disinterment offered Jay a historic chance to say his first hello, and for forensic experts to examine the pop singer's unautopsied remains 48 years after his death.

With the help of renowned forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Bass -- who helped positively identify the Lindbergh baby's long-dead remains and founded the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where he studies human decomposition -- Jay hoped to answer a few unanswered questions about his father's death.

And to introduce himself to his father.

A glorious day

The Bopper's first day above ground in more than 48 years was a glorious one. He died on a black night in light snow. But the day he was disinterred was all Texas spring under a mackerel sky, warm and bright.

Jay, who'll turn 48 next month, had arrived before dawn and sat alone in his truck near the grave. By the time a cemetery backhoe took its first bite of earth from the Bopper's grave, he had gathered with other onlookers -- including rock historian Bill Griggs and the Bopper's one-time radio boss John Neil -- at graveside.

Once the Bopper's inch-thick steel vault was hoisted from its muddy hole, it was taken to a more private workshop area, where it was cleaned and unsealed. A handful of cemetery workers and their somber supervisors hovered around it until the quarter-ton cap was finally lifted off, exposing to the midmorning sun the Bopper's casket, which the world last saw in a photo taken at Broussard's Funeral Home in Beaumont in 1959, sitting next to a funeral wreath sent by U.S. Army Pvt. Elvis Presley.

The casket looked extraordinarily intact after more than 48 years. Its few rusty spots were superficial, but a limey waterline a few inches short of its seal caused some concern.

Inside a nearby shop, away from any prying eyes, funeral director Rodney Landry warned the nine invited onlookers that he was 'inclined to believe there will be more than bones' but that what they were about to see 'will not be a pretty sight.'

Boppers Restaurant Marble

The enormous metal building fell deathly silent as Landry unlocked the lid. Although he still didn't know what he would see or how he would respond, Jay stood as close as he could.

Familiar ghost

The lid was lifted and Jay looked down upon a pale-blue face, a familiar ghost.

J.P. Richardson, who was only 28 when he died, was a well-preserved corpse dressed in a black suit and a blue-and-gray striped tie. He wore socks, but no shoes. Under his funeral-home suit, he was encased in a 'unionall,' a mortician's plastic garment that allows only the hands and head to be exposed.

Most remarkably, the Bopper's thick brown hair was still perfectly coifed in his familiar, 1950s crew cut.

But two people lay in the casket.

We all saw the earthly remains of Jiles Perry Richardson. The gentle and pudgy Beaumont kid nicknamed 'Killer' by his high school football coach.

The chain-smoking, flattopped high schooler who had hung around the radio studio at KTRM until they gave him a job. The kid they simply called 'Jape.'

But the Big Bopper was in there too. The alter ego whom many listeners believed was not Jape Richardson, but a jive-talking black hipster.

Never saw a dime

The shooting star in a leopard-skin jacket who would sell a million records but never see a dime from his greatest hit, 'Chantilly Lace.' The flamboyant joker who carried a pair of dice in his pocket and leg-wrestled backstage with Ritchie Valens.

The unlucky schlub who traded his sleeping bag for a plane ride -- and a casket.

The Bopper's ghost loitered there for everyone, except Jay.

Big Boppers Wellsville Menu

'They didn't bury the Big Bopper. They buried J.P. Richardson,' son Jay quipped after regaining his composure. 'The Bopper never would have worn that tie.'

Several people pitched in to lift the still heavy but fragile body from the old casket onto a gurney where it could be X-rayed by Dr. Bass and two radiologists.

Was the Bopper killed by the impact of the crash? Did he survive and try to go for help, only to die 40 feet from the wreckage, where his body was found? Was he truly a victim in the wild conspiracy theories that there had been gunplay on the plane?

'We're not doing this for history,' Dr. Bass said privately while waiting for the X-rays to be developed. 'We're doing this for a family. We have the ability to solve some of their personal mysteries.'

There was no bullet, the X-rays showed, but few had expected this would turn into a crime-scene investigation anyway. And the Bopper didn't survive the impact even for a moment, Dr. Bass determined. He suffered at least three death-dealing injuries that would have killed him before he took another breath: A crushed skull, a broken neck and a grotesquely mashed rib cage.

Tough decision

Jay has considered crushing the empty 16-gauge steel casket beyond recognition or melting it down to avoid seeing pieces of his father's coffin being traded like Elvis relics on eBay. Then he wondered if the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame might be a safe, respectful home for such a macabre but significant artifact of rock 'n' roll's first great tragedy.

He can't decide, so for now, the empty casket is stored in a secret place, a castoff too gruesome to be a cocktail-conversation piece, too historically intimate to become a hubcap.

When he died, the Bopper had only $8 in a savings account and his most valuable assets were a $400 Dodge sedan and a $100 guitar.

He hadn't yet received a penny of his 'Chantilly Lace' royalties, nor the gold record that was en route. His widow paid $2,648 for his funeral. Today, his royalties earn an estimated $100,000 a year for Jay.

Peace and closure

'I saw my father!' Jay said later. 'I was finally able to get peace for myself and hopefully in the process my father will be able to rest more peacefully.'

Before the Bopper was reburied, Jay and his two sons took a lock of his dad's flattop, as if carrying his living DNA wasn't enough.

And just before he shoveled the first spadeful of fresh earth into his father's new grave -- beside his mother's new grave -- Jay was unable to hold back the tears.

'I've been talking to Dad all day,' he said. 'And after 48 years, he can still amaze me.'

In the outside world, a few people grumbled that the autopsy was an unnecessary intrusion, even for a son. But it was, after all, the son's choice.

'The Big Bopper belonged to the world,' said Randy Steele, a close family friend. 'But Jiles Perry Richardson belonged to Jay.'

And Jay finally got to say his hello.

And goodbye.