In 2008 Peoria Gave The Road Back To The Songwriter
The city gave Abington Street the honorary name Fogelberg Parkway and the road runs past their old high school and toward the intersection where the convenience store stood
A chance Christmas errand had lasted only one evening and the city eventually put the name of the songwriter on the road leading back to where it happened
On Christmas Eve 1975 Dan Fogelberg walked into a Peoria convenience store to buy whipping cream and standing inside was the girl he had loved in high school and she was now married to someone else
Five years later she heard their private reunion playing on the radio
Fogelberg was home in Peoria in Illinois and visiting his family for Christmas and he was 24 and his career was beginning to move but he was not yet the soft rock star he would become
That night his family needed whipping cream for Irish coffee so Dan went to a nearby convenience store
Jill Anderson Had Gone Out For Eggnog
She and Fogelberg had dated at Woodruff High School before their lives separated as he headed west to pursue music and she eventually married and moved to Chicago
Neither had planned to see the other that night and they decided to talk
With nowhere convenient to go on Christmas Eve they bought a six pack and sat in the car of Jill for roughly two hours and caught up on the lives they had built without each other
Then they said goodbye and drove back to their families
Fogelberg kept the night and five years later he turned it into Same Old Lang Syne
He changed a few details for the song and the eyes of Jill were actually green for example but the encounter and the beer and the conversation were real
Even the final change in the weather was not invented and Fogelberg later said the snow really did turn to rain as he drove home
The single was released in 1980 and eventually reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100
She Heard Herself On The Radio And Stayed Silent
Jill discovered what Dan had done in perhaps the strangest way possible because she was driving to work when a new song came over the radio and the voice sounded familiar
Then came the convenience store and the old lovers and the conversation in the car and she realized she was listening to herself
But Jill said nothing publicly because Fogelberg had never identified her and she respected that privacy
Only after his death from prostate cancer in December 2007 did she finally reveal that she was the woman behind the song
It is about meeting the past for two hours and recognizing it and forgiving it and letting it go again
Dan Fogelberg went out that night for whipping cream and came back with a memory that would outlive them both