CHAPTER 15
On March 24, 1958, Elvis arrived at the Memphis draft board modeling a wan smile and a loud plaid sports jacket over a striped shirt. In his possession was precisely what the induction notice said to bring—a razor, a comb, a toothbrush, and enough money to last two weeks. Vernon, Gladys, Lamar, Cliff, Anita, and Colonel Parker, who handed out balloons stamped “King Creole,” went along, for moral support as much as company.
Once inside, Elvis stepped forward to take his place with the country boys, rednecks, poor whites, luckless blacks, urban trash, and down-on-their-luck hopefuls who typically made up the army of the fifties. Even in the equalizing regime of the service, Elvis stood out: He was placed in charge of the other fourteen recruits for the bus trip to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Before departing, Elvis kissed his weeping mother and gazed fondly at the ’58 Cadillac limousine he’d also leave behind. “Goodbye, you long, black son of a bitch,” he said with a wave, and then climbed aboard the bus to begin life as Private Presley.
At a press conference on the afternoon of March 26, the army announced that Elvis would be stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, for his eight weeks of basic training.
As with every other of Elvis’s press conferences, the questions were more like softball tosses, which Elvis sometimes ignored and other times knocked over the back fence. What if rock ’n’ roll should die out while he was in the service? “I’ll starve to death,” Elvis quipped. But the question struck a nerve—that was precisely what troubled him, even as he proudly reported that he’d now sold 25 million singles.
How did Elvis feel about being sent to Europe? “I’d like to go to Paris. And look up Brigitte Bardot.” And maybe record an Italian song? “I don’t know if I could cut the mustard.”
Elvis hoped to go to school in the army, he said, in case something “happened to the entertainment business.” Or maybe he’d go to college when he returned stateside, “but it’s according to what the future holds for me.” He wanted to keep busy, he said. “I don’t like to sit alone too much and think.”
Once he arrived at Fort Hood, the new recruit received 15,000 letters a week, all from fans pledging not to forget him during his tour of duty. And all forwarded to Colonel’s office in Madison, Tennessee, for reply. “The people never stopped coming to Graceland, thousands of ’em, all the time Elvis was in the service,” Vester remembered. “Travis was on the gate, and he walked them up around the house all day long.”
In Killeen, Texas, Elvis rented a house rather than live on the base, claiming he needed to care for his parents, who would soon arrive. “On the weekends, he’d come to our home in Waco,” recalled Eddie Fadal, a disc jockey friend from Elvis’s early touring days. “We even went to the expense of building a room similar to Elvis’s own suite at Graceland onto our house for Elvis to relax in.
“On the surface, he was happy. But behind the facade of a soldier, Elvis was very sad . . . about so many things—giving up a career which he loved so dearly . . . and sad simply because of the added anxiety and stress overseas duty would cause his beloved mother. The first time he called her from Texas, he did it from our house. He’d been at Fort Hood for two weeks, and he hadn’t had a chance to phone. When he got her on the line, all he said was, ‘Mama . . .’ And, apparently, she said, ‘Elvis . . .’ And from then on, for a whole hour, they were crying and moaning on the telephone—hardly a word was spoken.”
BILLY SMITH: As soon as Elvis got the draft notice, God, Aunt Gladys got real upset. She was sure her baby was going to get killed, even though there was no war going on. To her, Germany was enemy territory. And it would stay that way, even though everybody told her how American the base was.
LAMAR FIKE: The 2nd Armored Division unit went straight to Germany after basic training to replace the 3rd Armored Division that was serving in Europe. Elvis was already planning on taking the family with him, even Grandma. But Gladys said, “I’m not going with him to a foreign country. I can’t do it.” You’re talking about a woman who had a third-grade education. I remember she said, “Lamar, I can’t see myself away from Sonny Boy that long. But I just can’t go with him.”
BILLY SMITH: She was taking diet pills, and she was drinking. She tried to hide it from Elvis, but she couldn’t.
MARTY LACKER: Elvis knew his mother drank. He knew everything she did. Even if he wasn’t with her.
BILLY SMITH: As a teenager, I could tell when she was inebriated. But she usually stayed in her room. She was not one to openly drink, not even with family. I guess because she didn’t want to be like the rest of them. I wouldn’t necessarily call her an alcoholic. Now, my daddy was closer to being an alcoholic than she was. The biggest majority of the time she would go without it, but it seemed like when she got worried, she clung to that real quick.
LAMAR FIKE: Right before we left for the service, Gladys was getting bloated. The menopause was driving her absolutely screw-loose, and she’d take those amphetamines, and she’d wash ’em down with beer. One minute she’d be happy, and the next minute she’d be a raving maniac. And she would be hot one minute, cold the next.
BILLY SMITH: One reason Aunt Gladys took the diet pills was because she wanted to look good for Elvis in her pictures. She didn’t want Elvis to be embarrassed by her size. And Colonel was all the time telling her how to dress, and how to act in public.
LAMAR FIKE: When it came time for Elvis to go to basic training in Texas, Elvis wanted Alan to go with him and then just go on to Germany with him, too. But Alan’s mother wouldn’t let him go because she didn’t want him over in Germany. It was that Jewish thing. So Elvis said, “Lamar, I want you to go with me.” I said, “Okay, fine.”
When Elvis went down for his physical, I tried to get in the army, too. Because of my weight—I guess I was still about three hundred pounds then—they tried to get me clearance through the surgeon general. But the surgeon general wouldn’t give it. So I just went along with Elvis anyway. I brought the [Lincoln] Mark II to Killeen, checked into a motel, and hid in that son of a bitch for a week. I was scared to go out because the Colonel had called me and said, “Don’t talk to anybody. He’s not supposed to have any of his guys with him.” The press was all over us, trying to find out who I was. I was the only one with him in Texas ’til Red came back from the Marine Corp.
BILLY SMITH: I think there was a lot about Gladys’s health we didn’t know. She was like Elvis. Regardless of how bad she might be hurting, she never let him know. She’d say, “I’m all right. I’ll be fine.” But just before she went out there to Fort Hood, and they got the trailer and all, she just seemed withdrawn. And worried.
LAMAR FIKE: It started when Gladys came to Killeen in mid-June. At first, we lived in a three-bedroom trailer parked outside of Fort Hood. But people wouldn’t leave us alone. So we rented the mayor’s house. And Gladys started getting sick. One day, I looked at her, and she was getting a yellow tinge to her eyes and her skin. And I went to Elvis and I said, “You need to call a doctor. Something’s wrong, and I mean it.” But he didn’t want to hear about it.
BILLY SMITH: She had yellow jaundice. Whether it was just from the drinking, I don’t know. But her liver was giving out.
LAMAR FIKE: Gladys and Vernon started fighting as soon as they got down there. Fights usually happened early in the morning, in the kitchen. One morning she jumped on him, and she said, “You steercotted [castrated] bastard!” I turned around to Elvis and I said, “That’s the funniest line I’ve heard this year.”
Not everything was unpleasant for her down there, though. We took her to Eddie Fadal’s house in Waco for the Fourth of July to eat hamburgers. She seemed to enjoy that. Elvis met Eddie in ’55 or early ’56, back when he was real hot in Texas, before he broke nationally. Eddie had a theater, and he was a big fan. And he would come and take Elvis to eat and stuff like that. Then, when Elvis was in the army, and we were at Fort Hood, Eddie would come up and bring pies and stuff. We would go over to his house and stay overnight or the weekends because it was close to Killeen.
Alan said Colonel told him he thought Eddie was a homosexual and wanted Elvis to watch out for him. Elvis thought that was nuts. Eddie didn’t require anything of Elvis. He’d been a disc jockey at one time, and he was real nice to him. He was older and had a family, and we would go visit them on Lasker Street there in Waco. It was his old family home, and it was like a home away from home for us. Later on, I ended up marrying Eddie’s daughter, Janice, and living in that house.
Eddie used to come up to Graceland once in a while. But Eddie was never really a strong member of the group. He was an outsider we let in every once in a while. He was a good person. He just died in ’94, of a heart attack.
BILLY SMITH: I remember Anita Wood went down to Texas a couple of times. I was jealous. Because everybody seemed to be going except me.
LAMAR FIKE: Elvis thought Gladys would get better. But she just kept getting worse. I kept telling him, “We’ve got to get her back home.” We got in a big fight about it. I said, “If you don’t let her go to the hospital, buddy, she’s going to die right here on you.” But Elvis wouldn’t let her go.
Red was down there then, and he and I sat there and preached to him. It was like trying to peel a Band-Aid off a potato. You just couldn’t get it off. Then she got so yellow that they finally called a doctor. He told ’em what he thought was going on, and after that, Elvis begged her to go to the hospital. The doctor thought she ought to go back to Memphis. We took her to Temple, Texas, and put her on the train. This was on August 8. She didn’t want to go. She knew she was dying. She started that stuff again about wanting to die before Elvis and Vernon.
Right after they got back to Memphis, Vernon called me and said, “Lamar, you need to tell Elvis to get up here as quick as possible—tomorrow if he can.” I said, “He’s out in the field.” So I got in the jeep and went out in the field and got him. We came back in, and he went in to get an emergency leave. I went with him. This captain was sitting behind the desk. Elvis said, “I need an emergency leave, sir, my mother is dying.” And the captain said, “Is she actually dead yet?”
Elvis stopped, and his jaw tightened up, and he said, “I want you to understand who I am and what I’m getting ready to do.” He said, “My name is Elvis Presley. I sell a lot of records, and I’m a star.” He said, “I’ve played your little army games. I’ve shot your guns, and I’ve rolled your tanks. But that’s my mother.”
He said, “If I don’t get a pass in my hand in the next five minutes, you can stick all this stuff up your ass. I’m going AWOL, and it’s not going to look good for you when I call a press conference and say, ‘The reason I went AWOL is because they wouldn’t give me emergency leave to see my mother.’ Now, how does that grab you?”
It sounded like movie dialogue, but he actually said it. And son, there was some fast moving. That captain jumped up from behind that desk and went to the major’s office, and he was white as a sheet.
Elvis turned around, and I said, “Are you serious about that?” He said, “I’m going AWOL. Get the car ready, charter a plane, and come back and pick me up. We’re going to Memphis.” And that captain came back in with the pass in his hand, and he said, “You can go ahead and go.” That was August 11 or 12.
BILLY SMITH: Aunt Gladys had acute, severe hepatitis, but a heart attack actually killed her. Elvis didn’t want an autopsy, so I guess we’ll never know what brought it on. She didn’t seem to be in that bad a shape. Because the night before she died, we had gone up to Methodist Hospital to see her. Elvis said, “Mama, do you want me to stay the night?” And she said, “No, son, everything’s okay.” He said, “Well, I might go to the movie, and then I’ll come back by here.” She said, “No, just go on to the movie now, and come back up here tomorrow. If I need anything, Daddy will call you.” So he kissed her and left. She would never worry him. That’s how strong a mother’s love is. I don’t think Elvis had any idea she would die. He really thought she’d get better.
LAMAR FIKE: Gladys was going fast. They drained something like a gallon and a half of fluid off of her two days before she died. August 13 was a Wednesday. God, what a day and night that was! That day, I carried Grandma, or Miss Minnie, home, and I came back to the hospital and Gladys was deathly ill. I didn’t get to see her. And Elvis said, “Lamar, she’s asked about you two or three times.” I said, “Elvis, you’ve got me running my brains out here.” He said, “Come with me in the morning and well go see her, ’cause she’s going to be all right.” I’d already talked to the doctor. I said to Billy or somebody, “She’s not going to make it through the night.”
BILLY SMITH: Gladys always had that ESP about Elvis. Well, the night before she died, he had it about her. He didn’t want to be alone, and he asked me to spend the night in his room. I told him I had to go home and ask my mama. He said, “Well, run on out and ask her and come back.”
Elvis didn’t like for men to sleep in the same bed with him. So I made a pallet at the foot of his bed with a couple of blankets and a pillow. For just a few minutes, we watched TV. And then he thought he could go to sleep. So we turned the TV off, and we talked a minute, and then we both drifted off.
He never really went to sleep, but I think he dozed off a bit. Then he raised up and said, “Something’s wrong.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I don’t know. All of a sudden I got an eerie feeling.”
Nothing else was said, and he laid back down. And it wasn’t too long after that when the phone rang downstairs. This was a little after three A.M. Everybody had gone home. And Lamar was out somewhere. Elvis said, “It’s late. Maybe you might ought to go down there and get it.” And I said, “All right.”
When I answered, I could hear Vernon. He said, “Oh, God—” He was just sobbing. He said, “Tell Elvis . . . ” Then he really broke up. I don’t know if the nurse took the phone from him or if he handed it to her, but she got on, and I could hear him crying in the background.
She told me her name, and then she said, “Tell Elvis he needs to get up here quick as he can. His mother has taken a turn for the worse.”
I run upstairs, and all the while I was choosing not to believe that Gladys was dead. I didn’t know how to tell Elvis. I got up there, and I said, “That was the nurse at the hospital.” And he jumped up real quick. I said, “She said to tell you that you might ought to get up there, that your mom is starting to slip.”
And he said, “Oh, my God! No, Mama, no!” I think he knew. But he didn’t want to believe it. And he put on his white shoes. He had on a pair of white pants, and a white ruffled shirt, and no socks.
We run downstairs, and we jumped into the Lincoln Mark II, and we tore out of there like all hell had broke loose. The whole time we were driving, he said, “Oh, God, I’m scared! I’m afraid I’ve lost my mama!” When we got to Methodist Hospital, he didn’t even stop the car. He just left the son of a bitch running. In drive now. And he jumped out. The car just went right on over the breaker. That’s the only thing that stopped it. He didn’t care.
I shoved it into park real quick and got out. I just left the keys in it, with the motor still running and the lights on and both doors open. Elvis wasn’t waiting for shit. I was just a kid—fifteen, I guess—and I was going at almost a dead run to keep up with him.
We got upstairs, and as Elvis turned the corner, Vernon and a nurse were coming up the hall from Gladys’s room. Vernon reached out his arms and said, “Oh, God, son!” And he broke up. When he did, Elvis just run towards him, and they met in the middle.
Vernon said, “God, son, she’s gone!” And all the color drained out of Elvis’s face. He was white as a sheet. He started to sob this kind of unearthly sound. I can’t really tell you what it was like. But it just went through me.
It was a sad thing to see them hurt that way. Even as a teenager, I felt their hurt. They cried for a little while, and then Elvis said, “I want to see her. Where is she?” And they didn’t want him to. Vernon kept saying, “No, son, don’t go in there.” And the nurse said, “She’s still in her room. But it might not be a good idea to see her.” Elvis said, “No, I’ve got to see my mama!” I guess he had to see that she was really gone before he would accept it. So he went in, and I went with him.
I remember Gladys still had on her little pink nightgown. She’d had an oxygen tent pulled over her, but they had it turned back. She had a restful look about her.
Elvis leaned over and put his hand under the back of her head and pressed his cheek to hers. He was crying and stroking her head, and he was patting her on the stomach. I didn’t understand everything he was saving to her. But I heard him say, “Oh, God, Satnin’, not now. Not when I can give you everything in the world.”
I backed up, and I thought, “Oh, God! Man, this is not happening.” I’d look at him for a minute, and then I’d look at Vernon, and then at Aunt Gladys. I can still see his face, and I can see hers. Elvis was just steadily petting and talking to her. Finally, Uncle Vernon and the nurse got him and said, “Come on out.” We went down the hall to the waiting room. By that time, other people had got up there. Every time somebody new would walk in, Elvis would just break up all over again. His world had just been snatched from him.
LAMAR FIKE: In the wee hours of the fourteenth, I drove up the drive to the house in that ’58 black Cadillac limousine. The wind was blowing, and I saw the doors were open. Grandma came out, and she said, “Gladys is dead, we need to go to the hospital.” We shot over there and that elevator opened, and I’ve never heard such crying and screaming and hollering in my life. It was unbelievable. This wailing. Almost like wolves. It made me shudder. I came around the corner and Elvis was walking towards me, and he said, “Lamar, Satnin’ isn’t here.” And I said, “I know, Elvis, I know.”
BILLY SMITH: I read someplace that the night she died, the last time Elvis was up to the room, she said, “Son, when you come back tomorrow, make sure the other patients have these flowers.” That’s probably the truth because that sounds like her. But Elvis probably took it to mean, “Just make sure these flowers are distributed to some of the other patients,” because she’d gotten so many, you know. She was talking good, and he thought she was getting better, and it wouldn’t be long ’til she was out of the hospital. Then all of a sudden, BANG! It was just such a shocker.
LAMAR FIKE: Vernon said he was asleep there in the room with her, and she woke him up, struggling for breath. He got to her as quick as he could, and raised her head, and called a nurse to get the doctor. They put her in an oxygen tent, but it was too late. She’d gone into cardiac arrest.
Elvis and I sat down and talked before we left the hospital. And as we were going out the door to get in the limousine, the ambulance was pulling out with Gladys’s body. That was another trauma. He wouldn’t let her go for the longest time. He was sobbing, saying, “She’s all we ever lived for.” And, “She was always my best girl.”
When we got home, Elvis went to the telephone and made a few calls, so people would know about the funeral. He told Eddie Fadal, “I’ve lost the only person I ever really loved.”
MARTY LACKER: You know what was weird? Red’s daddy passed away the same day. Red had two funerals to go to when he got home.
BILLY SMITH: Elvis wanted Aunt Gladys to lie in state there at Graceland, right between the music room and the living room. That son of a bitch Goldman wrote that when they brought her home, Elvis whipped out his comb and fooled with her hair and massaged her feet in the casket. That’s not true. Or I never saw it. Let me put it that way. I heard him say things like, “Baby, I’m going to miss you.” And, “Wake up now, Mama, and talk to Elvis.” He petted her, even in the casket. That’s true. And he might have arranged her hair or maybe felt her hands and all. Because in a way death fascinated him. And yet it scared him, too. But most of the time, he just sat up on the couch and looked at her. He sat up almost all night and just stared.
I don’t think he even said anything, not even to his daddy. The times they did talk, they tried not to talk about Gladys being dead. They talked around it—about what they needed to do or how she would want something. The night before they actually brought her home, they talked about what she was going to be buried in, which was a crepelike lavender blue dress.
LAMAR FIKE: It just killed me when she died. It broke my heart. But, God, Elvis . . . they brought her back to Graceland, and he got nearly hysterical. Started that wailing again. It made my skin crawl. When people came to pay their respects, he’d take ’em over to the casket and talk. Like, “Here’s Eddie, Mama. You remember him. You met him down in Texas.”
BILLY SMITH: There was no wailing out that I heard. If there was, Elvis done it in private. He was pretty tore up. At one point, he got up from the couch and went out on the porch, and he sat on the steps there, next to one of the marble lions, and put his arm on his knee, and his face kind of on his arm, and just cried something awful. I followed him out there, but I didn’t know what to say or do. I wanted to go over and hug him and say, “God, it will be all right.” But I felt like it would only make things worse, so I just let him be.
I can never get that out of my mind. I remember it so vividly because Elvis was my idol. Just being with him was such a thrill. I wanted to protect him, and make sure nothing like that ever happened to him. I hated to see him hurt.
LAMAR FIKE: They had the service for her, where the Blackwood Brothers sang and Reverend [James] Hamill officiated, and then they took her over to the cemetery. And when it came time to lower the casket into the ground, Elvis jumped up and hung on to the coffin. He was saying stuff like “Everything I have is gone!” And then he got totally hysterical. He said, “Goodbye, darling. I love you so much. I lived my whole life just for you!” And he went on and on about how he couldn’t be without her. I had to pull him off the casket. It took two or three of us to get him off. That was a pretty bad scene, God. He screamed, “Please don’t take my baby away! She’s not dead. She’s just sleeping.”
BILLY SMITH: He broke down crying, but he didn’t drape and cling to the casket. Elvis had more class than that. Even though he was hurting the worst in his life, he wouldn’t have done that. But he did say things, and put his arm around the casket, and then they lowered it down. There just wasn’t no hangin’ on.
LAMAR FIKE: All in all, it was a pretty civilized affair. I mean, the fans had crowded around the Memphis Funeral Home like it was some kind of circus opening. Vernon wanted to let ’em all parade by to see the body. But, thank God, I talked him out of that.
BILLY SMITH: The shock of Aunt Gladys’s death was bad enough, but then we got another one when her will was read. Uncle Vernon had altered it. I’m almost sure of that. Because Aunt Gladys had told two or three people that they’d be taken care of if she died. She said, “If anything ever happens to me, there’s a provision in the will for my brothers and my sisters.” And she told Vernon what she wanted to leave them. And it was left up to the executor of her estate, who, I know, was Vernon.
But as soon as she passed away, you didn’t hear no more about it. I’m sure Vernon told Elvis, “We’ll take care of the family. There’s no need to put out the money.” So either it was never done or Vernon changed the will. And Elvis was too out of it when she died to pay attention to stuff like that.
LAMAR FIKE: Four weeks after Gladys died, Elvis was shipped overseas. He never had time to get over her death. He carried her damn nightgown around for weeks. Wouldn’t put it down for anything. Slept with it in the chair. And cried all the time. All the time. He probably needed grief counseling, although nobody talked about that back then. When we got over to Germany, he was still reeling, still trying to put it together.
When you chronicle the demise of Elvis Presley, you have to realize that the tilt started when Gladys died. That was the most devastating thing that ever happened to him. He would never be the same.