EVERY PETRARCH NEEDS A LAURA, every Clapton a Layla. Maria Bartiromo, the CNBC anchorwoman, gained a different kind of fame in a punk ode by the late Joey Ramone (who rhymed her surname with “I wanna know-oh”). A Lubbock girl’s boyfriend, Jerry Allison, who was one of the Crickets, persuaded Buddy Holly to rename their new song, “Cindy Lou,” for her, and Peggy Sue Gerron lucked into pop immortality.Now another Texan, Elisabeth Reed Wagner, has been immortalized in verse. The country hit “Elisabeth” was inspired by her struggles with neurofibromatosis—a disease that causes tumors along nerves—and, later, with the cancer that would kill her on April 11 at the age of 21. Cancer and death are everyday tragedies, of course, faced with some measure of…The post Grace Notes appeared first on Texas Monthly.