Elvis is gone. Not sure about a fan named Knapman
The Hamilton man made about 75 trips to Memphis, and became more of an Elvis spectacle with every trip
Tomorrow, as dusk falls on Memphis, the annual Candlelight Vigil begins at the gates of Graceland.
They keep the grounds open until the last fan has filed past. Even though mourners are told not to linger at the memorial, the procession runs right through until the early hours of the next day.
By then it will be Aug. 16. Elvis died on that day, 41 years ago. He would now be 83, and many of his fans are getting up there too.
One Hamilton man was more devoted to the Memphis way than any other in this town. His name, David Knapman. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive.
Either way, he’s not at that vigil. A walk past the grave was not for him.
“I don’t dwell on the fact the man’s dead,” he told me in the summer of 1987.
He had just returned from Memphis, about his 75th trip there in the previous eight years.
“I might be all ready to go to bed here, and then it just sweeps over me,” he said. “I’ve got to go to Memphis.”
He would head to the closet, pull out one of his $500 fringed leather jackets (black, yellow, grey or white) and go. Knapman, who ran Graceland Building Products, had two Cadillacs and a Continental to choose from for the 1,500-kilometre trip. Each vehicle had Elvis plates.
When I visited him back then, the final minutes of the most recent journey had not gone well. Just after he pulled off the 403 at Main West, he hit a car stopped for a bus.
But that would not mean the end of the missions to Memphis. Knapman, 39, said it all started when people told him he looked like Elvis did in those later jumpsuit days. At first he didn’t believe them. And then he did.
So he made those trips. Each time, he became one more Memphis attraction.
He signed autographs, waitresses gushed over him, tourists asked him to pose with an arm around them. Some people would break into Hound Dog when he was stopped at an intersection.
Our interview was 31 years ago, and I never saw David Knapman again.
Then, a few columns ago, I wrote about this area’s first amusement park. It was called Bay View and opened in 1883, just west of where the Easterbrook foot-long dogs stand is today. The park had a hand-cranked merry-go-round, a roller rink, a steam-powered incline railway to get patrons from the small ferry dock on the bay to the bluffs above.
But by the 1920s, a man named Oscar M. Trano had erected a mausoleum on those lush park grounds. He built others across Ontario, but this was apparently his last and his grandest.
I had gone over to the site — now known as Bayview Cemetery, Crematorium & Mausoleum — to walk the grounds and try to imagine the amusement park there. Then I headed inside.
Everything is marble. The light is soft, the halls are quiet. Just as you would expect.
Suddenly, at the intersection of Lower Level West Wing and Corridor Two, there he was. David C. Knapman. Below his name, etched in stone, “Elvis.” Year of birth, 1948. No end date.
Below his crypt, one for Rose-Marie Renée Lambert. Below her name, “Memphis Belle.” Year of birth, 1956. Again, no second date.
The Knapman remembrance is palatial, with two velvet-cushioned chairs behind a locked gate of bronze. This is the kind of space Elvis would get, the best on the block.
I tried to get information from Bayview. I put out a call on Facebook and Twitter. I knocked on some doors, made some calls. I did not find our Elvis.
Bayview has a motto: “Every life tells a story. Celebrate yours.”
David Knapman took that advice, but no final chapter yet.