She’s a hunka burnin’ love for Elvis
Every night when she goes to bed, Gladys Hopkinson plugs in her Elvis Presley clock light.
It sits on the wall above her pictures of Elvis, and when she switches it on a neon glow is cast over her collection of hundreds of items of memorabilia devoted to The King.
There are Elvis pictures, Elvis books, Elvis slippers, and Elvis figurines – enough to fill two rooms.
Gladys also has an Elvis Presley cuckoo clock. ‘‘Every hour or so he comes out and sings a few lines.’’
It’s fair to say that Gladys, who is 81, is probably one of The King’s biggest fans – that much is obvious the moment she opens the front door of her New Plymouth flat wearing a smart knitted sweater bearing the face of, who else, Elvis Presley.
‘‘Hi,’’ she says. ‘‘I’m Gladys and I love Elvis.’’
The jumper is certainly eyecatching.
‘‘Everywhere I go people say they love it and I say I do, too,’’ she says.
When I tell her how much I like it she laughs, ‘‘Well I’m sorry, you can’t have it.’’
Gladys’ collection fills her flat and may just be the most impressive personal collection of The King in New Zealand, and it grows constantly.
‘‘If I have a birthday or Christmas they’ll always buy me something Elvis.’’
Gladys says she has always loved Elvis’s music and says she can’t help but dance when she hears it, even though her legs don’t work as well as they used to.
She can’t remember the exact year she started collecting The King, but she knows she got serious after her partner and brother died of cancer and then her son died in a tractor accident in Australia.
The trauma threatened to overwhelm her – and then Elvis, it seems, came to her aid.
‘‘I thought, nah, I’m going to carry on with my life.
‘‘I had a bit of Elvis’ music and I started collecting.’’
Asked for her favourite piece, Gladys looks around her lounge and her eyes fall on a 3D portrait of Elvis which sits underneath her Elvis night light.
‘‘It’s more like him; it’s the way it’s been done.’’
What does Gladys like most about Elvis, who died nearly 41 years ago, on August 16, 1977?
‘‘I don’t really know, actually, possibly the way he moves.’’
Gladys doesn’t know how many Elvis items she has in her collection, and when asked she smiles and makes a suggestion.
‘‘If you’d like to stay here all day, I’ll count it up.’’