Tourists aren't only Elvis fans in town: Memphians' memories of the King
Monday morning, a photographer and I drove around Whitehaven, with Elvis Presley Boulevard as our axis, to ask shoppers and residents about the community's most famous residence, Graceland, and its famous former resident, who also happens to be one of Planet Earth's most famous former residents. Of course, I am referring to the namesake of the aforementioned boulevard, Elvis Presley.
To be frank, I expected the people we encountered to be more or less indifferent to Elvis and "Elvis Week," the annual celebration of the life and legacy of Elvis Presley that reaches its emotional climax each Aug. 15 with the Candlelight Vigil, a ceremony that brings thousands of fans to Graceland, to light candles and walk in stately procession to the Presley family grave site on the south side of the mansion.
Residents of Whitehaven have their own challenges and priorities, as do the residents of every community. So, even during Elvis Week, most of Whitehaven likely is not as preoccupied with Elvis as are Memphis' news media outlets. And I know from experience that it's easy to find Memphians in general who are are uninterested in or even hostile to Elvis Week.
And yet, almost every person we talked to Monday had a very specific and personal Elvis story. We approached them at random, in parking lots and near grocery store entrances, with no evidence of Elvis in sight, and yet — Elvis, sure, they could talk about Elvis.
"I saw Elvis' funeral procession," said Jo Ann Flowers, 71, outside a Roses Discount Store. "I can remember it came straight down Elvis Presley (Boulevard). "If you know where Church's Chicken is now, it was all the way down there. We were all out there, hollering. It was all Black people there, because that's who lived in the neighborhood."
She said she was a fan of Presley, whose pelvic gyrations proved irksome to the network censors. Said Flowers: "I remember when he first come on the Ed
Sullivan show, and they showed only the top part of him."
A lifelong resident of Whitehaven and an Elvis fan "ever since high school," Mary Ann Bell said she quit her job when she heard Elvis died on Aug. 16, 1977. A recent graduate of Fairley High, she was working at the time on President's Island.
"We were in the warehouse sitting on the boxes of sewing machines, and someone came in and said Elvis died. I said, "What! — I'm fixin' to go.' They said, 'You can't just quit because Elvis died.' But I was 16, what did I know?"
Asked why she was an Elvis fan, Bell said: "Who wasn't? He's lovable, he's sexy, and he had that TV appeal."
Marvin Conley, 71, didn't quit his job when he heard Elvis died, but he was on the job — specifically, he was working at El Chico, a Mexican restaurant, near Southland Mall. "I think I was in 11th grade. I hated to hear it, because I liked his movies."
He said Whitehaven residents tend to take Elvis Week in stride, in part because they see fans driving up and down Elvis Presley Boulevard "just about every day. It's common here." (Conley takes celebrities in stride, too. Asked if the spelling of his surname is like that of Mike Conley, he said: "That's my cousin. James Earl Jones is kin to me, too. He's one of my daddy's nephews.")
Unsurprisingly, young people had less Elvis awareness than older folks. Benautica Lee, 22, said she did not know Elvis Week was here until "I heard about it on TV."
Yet even she had a Graceland story. "Me, my mom and my sister wrote on the wall when I was about 7," she said, referring to the famous stone wall that runs across the front yard of Graceland and is covered with graffiti tributes to the King. She said the Lee family wasn't really into Elvis, but they wrote on the wall "just because it was an experience."
Bell said longtime Whitehaven residents adapt to Elvis Week the way anybody adapts to an annual event. "Everyone adjusts to it, you know it's coming. You don't hear anybody complaining because it's been here forever. It causes no problems, it's just making money for the city of Memphis."