If I should ever come into a fortune, one of the first things I would gladly spend part of it on would be hiring someone to archive all of my unorganized family and journalism career-related photographs.

Finding, identifying and making all those photos available in user friendly formats would be a labor intensive task requiring the skills of an expert detective and the Biblical patience of Job. And that could get expensive.

But right now I’d give $50 to anyone who could find the photo I wanted to run with this column – a 1957 black and white snapshot of me in front of the wrought iron “guitar gates” of Graceland.

Since this month marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis Aaron Presley at his home in Graceland, and the 50-year anniversary of him moving into the mansion with his parents, there is news of all sorts of special events scheduled to take place in Memphis, at Graceland and all over the country commemorating both occasions.

You can get the full scoop of all the upcoming anniversary events at either of these websites: www.elvis.com and www.ElvisWeek.com.

The Memphis activities range from an Elvis Music & Movies series to be held on the front lawn of Graceland and kicked off by four-time most popular NASCAR driver and lifelong Elvis fan Dale Earnhardt Jr., to a 30th anniversary concert featuring Elvis “live,” via video technology, on stage with a full orchestra and large cast of his original concert musicians and backup singers.

A wide array of associated new merchandise is also available – such as the first-ever boy doll, “Baby Elvis,” to be offered by Marie Osmond Dolls, and a limited number of prints of a specially commissioned, 50-year Anniversary portrait of Graceland by American “Painter of Light,” Thomas Kinkade.

Although Graceland has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1997, has been operated as a museum since 1982 and is now a worldwide tourism attraction, Kinkade’s idyllic painting of Elvis’ beloved home does remind me of how the place looked when I first saw it in 1957.

It was during the Thanksgiving holiday that year that my mom and dad and brother Roy and I went to Memphis to visit our friends Price and Louise Robinson and their teenage children – Jimmy, Ruth and Ronnie.
I was not so rabid an Elvis fan that I was reduced to joining all the other girls sobbing their heads off in the movie theater the year before when Elvis’s character in his first movie, Love Me Tender, died. But I couldn’t resist his music, and my mom become a lifelong fan, too, after seeing Elvis’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. So, when Jimmy offered to drive us out to see Elvis’ new house in Memphis, I was all for it.

By that time Elvis was already transitioning from mere national fame to international icon status and had reportedly decided to buy the palatial, two-story, American Colonial style home in order to have more privacy and security from his growing multitude of enthusiastic fans.

But after adding more rooms and a racquetball court to his new spacious home and grounds, and having a pink, Alabama fieldstone wall built around it, word was that when Elvis was home from performing live and on television or making movies and records he would sometimes appear at Graceland’s gates to say hi to the fans who often gathered there.

Once in awhile, it was rumored, he might even invite some admirers up to his house for a visit.

No such luck for us when Jimmy took us to Graceland, however. There was no sight of Elvis behind the locked gates, or any other fans there that evening, either, and I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed.

A few months later, if Elvis had just not been hustled off to boot camp in Texas so fast after getting his world famous first GI haircut here at Fort Chaffee on March 25, 1958, I’m sure I could have figured out a way to meet him – as I had a couple of years earlier managed to meet another music hero of mine, Louis Armstrong.

Today, I’m pretty sure I know exactly where my “Ambassador Satch” album is that Louie autographed for me. But I’ll be darned if I can find the 1957 photo that proves even though I never got to meet Elvis, during his glory days of rock’n’roll, some friends of mine and I dropped by his house. And 50 years later, his fans from all over the world are still visiting Graceland.

 

Linda Seubold, editor of Entertainment Fort Smith Magazine, can be reached at lindaseubold@efortsmith.com. Read her archived columns and articles online.

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