Feature Story

By Gideon C. Kennedy

Contributing writer

August 16, 2007 marked the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis Aaron Presley in his Memphis home.

In commemoration, my wife and I made our pilgrimage, tracing Elvis’ circle from the grave back to the cradle.

After stopping briefly in Lucedale, Miss., to visit Palestine Gardens, a miniature replica of the Holy Land tucked into the backwoods of Mississippi, we arrived in Memphis on the evening of the 15th and immediately made our way to the mansion. A controlled chaos of international fan clubs and Elvis in simulacrum clogged the sidewalks. Cars crawled along as the street was blocked off and traffic redirected for the annual candlelight vigil.

Every year since his death, a vigil has taken place on this night. And every year since Graceland opened for tours in 1982 (quickly ranking as the second most-visited home in the U.S., just behind the White House), those holding vigil have been allowed to proceed up the drive to visit the King’s gravesite in the Meditation Garden. After an opening ceremony lit by a sea of candles held aloft, the procession starts around 9 p.m. and goes until the drive must be cleared for tours to begin the next morning. As the procession and festivities go on through the night, many camp in the street, setting up their own elaborate candlelit shrines.

Though we paid our respect from a distance, swaying to his songs as they bellowed from loudspeakers, we forewent the ceaseless line, knowing we would pass his grave the next day on the home tour.

The candlelight vigil is really the centerpiece in what has become known as Elvis Week. Like the gift shops that carry any conceivable item emblazoned with Elvis’s name or likeness, Elvis Week has an event for Elvis fans of any stripe. Charity dinners, 5K runs, film festivals, Elvis-themed farmer’s markets, and any number of book signings, meet-and-greets, tours and conferences crowd the days surrounding the anniversary.

I have often scoffed at the changes made to Graceland since Presley’s death, but for the first time on this tour I saw the brilliance in their design.

Despite it’s hodgepodge of décor from different eras in the singer’s history, the tour tells a morality tale as it takes the visitor through the nicely appointed formal living and dining rooms, by the economy of his parents’ bedroom, downstairs to the mid-year luxuries of his TV and billiards rooms, and back up into the garish excess of the late-era jungle room.

Once outside and on the path from one separate structure to the next, the tour takes you through his hobbies (shooting range, horse stables, racquetball court) and into a timeline of his possessions (jewelry, gold lame suit, gold records, movie costumes and props, fan club gifts, custom jumpsuits, a wall of awards), only to deliver you to his grave.

Looking through the fountain, you can see the message writ across the faces of those lined up to stand before the graves of Elvis, his beloved mother Gladys, his father Vernon, his grandmother Minnie Mae, and his unborn twin, Jesse Garon. From right to left, the smiles drop off as each inches nearer the large marker piled high with tokens from the night’s vigil.

And after shuffling through the house, shoulder-to-shoulder in front of one display after another, inexorably moved through place and time, there is no line beyond the grave.

Within his own home, Elvis Presley’s journey from beggar to king and back down to the fate of us all is laid out as a clockwise tour through the Presley myth.

We skipped the anniversary concerts and galas then continue on from Memphis a couple days later to Holly Springs, Miss., and into the home of Paul MacLeod, known as Graceland Too. Paul MacLeod is inarguably the universe’s biggest Elvis fan. Having begun collecting Elvis stuff in 1954, MacLeod has since dedicated his home, and consequently his life, to the “King of Rock and Roll.” Surrounded by blue Christmas trees wrapped in barbed wire, surely for the protection of the prized collection contained within, Graceland Too is a homemade, walk-in, live-in, floor-to-ceiling temple to MacLeod’s idol.

Among the rooms of records and clippings and trading cards and portraits, one thing becomes clear: If Elvis borders on a religion, then surely Paul MacLeod is his most sincere prophet. For us, he represented something else: a life concurrent with Elvis’s, one who found meaning in the other, and by whose lasting reflection we could see into Elvis Presley’s extinguished, but shining, existence.

The final stop on our counter-clockwise trip through Elvis lore took us back to the point of origin, Tupelo, Miss. There, Elvis Presley’s two-room birthplace stands as testament to humble beginnings.

Of course, the requisite gift shop looms as the ever-present shadow of Colonel Tom Parker’s moneymaking legacy, but what is truly important is this part of the story. What all the pictures of Elvis in his poor, awkward youth show us is the potential within us all.

Because even if you can’t see it for all the tacky glamour that decorated Elvis’s life, his is truly one of the thousand faces of Joseph Campbell’s mythic, universal hero.

He came from nothing, then rose through sheer will and talent above his circumstances. Through his music, he entered another world, was beset by dangers, found guidance both malignant and benign, and came back bearing Rock and Roll. He was, by most accounts, a loving member of his family, a fiercely loyal friend, and generous to everyone he met. Though he had virtuoso skill, he also had a populist appeal. He was flawed, as are we all, and finally, towards the end, gave us a cautionary tale mapping the perils of excess. Elvis Presley and, possibly more importantly, the collective story that is Elvis Presley since his death embodies the American Dream.

On our trip, my wife and I did little more than tour three homes, two of which are shells left empty by their original life. But really what we were doing was walking through a story, seeing for ourselves the ripples of a life now 30 years gone.

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