Inside Graceland: Elvis' Maid Remembers (15 page)

He drove to the cemetery that afternoon to personally oversee the removal of the two caskets. It was his way of finalizing what he knew he had to do. He was making sure every detail was properly attended to.

It was a tough decision to have Elvis actually buried in the ground. Elvis had always said that he did not want to be buried in the ground. I had heard him say that on several occasions, as had a number of other friends and family members. That was why Vernon had bought an above ground crypt at Forest Hills Cemetery and had him buried there when he died.

Vernon had originally talked about building an above ground crypt in the meditation garden area. However, after getting several bids on what it would cost to have what he wanted constructed, he realized that there was not enough money in the estate to have one designed and built. He and Grandma had already decided that the meditation garden area was to become the final resting place, not just for Elvis and Gladys, but for the two of them as well. He knew that if a mausoleum was to be built, it would have to be fairly grand, considering the status of Elvis Presley. I heard that one estimate was over a million dollars for what Vernon had wanted. Also, of course, we all knew that the prices were probably increased just because of who it was going to be for. That was a constant problem that Vernon ran into on just about anything he tried to do.

Another consideration in having Elvis buried below ground was that it was felt it would be much more difficult for someone to have to go to the trouble of excavating a grave, which would take some sort of specialized equipment, as opposed to what would be involved in trying to break into a crypt, if another attempt was ever made to try and steal his body.

In any case, the fact that he was not able to accommodate that one wish from his son, not to be buried in the ground, added even more of a burden to an already over-burdened father trying his best to do what he thought Elvis would have wanted him to do.

Vernon had also had to do one other uncomfortable task, in order to try and get everything ready for the move back to Graceland.

As he had begun planning to have Elvis and Gladys moved back home, he was also burdened by the thought of his other son, Jesse Garon, Elvis’ twin who had not survived the birth process, being left behind in Mississippi.

Because of their lack of money, Vernon had been forced to bury his other son in an unmarked grave in Priceville Cemetery back in Tupelo. Grandma had told me the heartbreaking story of how they had been so poor that they could not even afford a casket to bury little Jesse in, and how they had buried him in a small cardboard box. The family had remained so poor during the early years that they were never able to buy a headstone for him.

That had always bothered Vernon and, now that he was bringing Jesse’s twin brother home, as well as their mother, he thought that this would be a good chance to locate Jesse’s body and bring it home as well, thus making sure the family was properly together again.

Sometime, I believe it was about the middle of September, Vernon, along with several family members, made two different trips to Priceville Cemetery in Tupelo, in an attempt to locate Jesse’s grave.

He had hired the services of a funeral home to relocate Jesse’s body to Graceland, along with the rest of his family, if he were able to find the grave. Sadly, however, the ravages of time and the environment had swept away any remaining clues to the location of the original grave.

It was never located, and Vernon, with a very heavy heart, finally came into the kitchen the night of his second failed trip to Tupelo, and announced to everyone that they would have to settle on a memorial plaque, instead, to honor the memory of his second son. I did see the tears in his eyes that night.

Vernon had arranged for a small memorial service to be held that Sunday evening at the new grave site. George Coleman, the electrician, had wired lighting into the ceiling of the large tent the funeral home had erected over the two freshly dug graves.

Only a handful of close friends and family members were invited to the service. In fact, I remember thinking that there were more people from the funeral home present than there were family and friends. Several folding chairs had been set up for Vernon, Aunt Delta and Dodger between the graves and the swimming pool area. Aunt Delta and Dodger were seated just prior to the beginning of the service, and Vernon joined them after watching the caskets being unloaded from the two shiny white hearses. The two vehicles had been carefully backed up along the service drive directly in front of the meditation garden.

I don’t remember exactly what time the small informal service began but it seems like it was somewhere around seven pm. I just remember that the sun had already started to go down and the chill of the October night, combined with the newly arranged glaring lights coming from the funeral home tent, made the already somber occasion seem even more bizarre.

From my vantage point near the swimming pool, I watched as the men from the funeral home unloaded and placed Elvis’ casket on a wheeled cart and then wheeled it to the grave site. The silence of the occasion was interrupted only by the muffled sounds of the traffic coming from the street down below, a street bearing Elvis’ name.

I could not help but notice that Elvis’ casket looked as shiny as it had been several weeks before, during the original funeral service. But the big surprise to all of us was the fact that Glady’s casket, which had been buried since 1957, looked shiny and new as well.

It had, of course, been encased in a very expensive vault all those years, and, we were later told, had been touched up a little by the maintenance men at Forest Hills Cemetery before being brought to Graceland. Vernon later told George Coleman, the electrician, that he had carefully inspected both caskets at the cemetery, and that he had only seen one small spot of rust on one of the handles on Glady’s casket.

The casket containing Gladys was placed on the waiting lowering straps over the open grave. Next came the casket bearing the body of Elvis. It, too, was placed on the waiting apparatus. As soon as the men walked back towards the two hearses, the service began.

I don’t remember who conducted the service. I just remember that it was very short and simple. Vernon had made the decision that the family had already endured more than enough heartache, and that this service would not be any longer than what decorum dictated.

After a final short prayer, the family and friends began the short walk around the swimming pool area and back toward the main house. As they did, the funeral home attendants hit the two buttons simultaneously, releasing both caskets and allowing them to sink slowly into the waiting vaults.

Vernon made it to about the corner of the swimming pool, stopped and briefly looked back, for the last time, at the two people he had cared about more than anyone else in the world. With tears in his eyes he straightened his shoulders, turned back toward the house, and walked away. He told me the next day that that had been as hard an ordeal for him as when he first buried Elvis six weeks before.

But, at least, he told me, “Elvis and his mother are now home again, this time for good. That’s the way it should be.”

He told me that this did, in it’s own way, help give him some sense of peace. And, Lord knows, he sure needed it.

He could at least walk out and visit their graves whenever he wanted to, and not worry about having his privacy invaded like it had been by the hundreds of fans who were still trekking through the Forest Hills Cemetery in search of seeing where their former idol had been buried.

Even though Elvis was no longer with us, we could at least take comfort that his remains were now home.

Graceland would never be the same again.

“LIFE AFTER ELVIS”
 

We were all a little worried that the death of Elvis would mean the end of our service with Graceland. Luckily, we were wrong.

Several days after Elvis had been moved back to Graceland, Vernon called all of us together in the kitchen. Our fears were not only laid to rest, but were actually buoyed by the news Vernon had for us.

He explained to us that he did not intend to make very many changes at Graceland right away. He sat in a chair and said, “You have all been a part of Elvis’ world for so long, and nothing has changed as far as this being the Presley home. As long as I’m able to do so, I intend to keep it that way. After all, my mother and my sister still live here, and that’s not going to change.”

Things did pretty much remain the same as far as it continuing to be the Presley home. As he had pointed out, the duties of the staff did not change at all. The same things needed to be done to keep the house running as it had been before.

Several changes did take place as far as some of Elvis’ buddies were concerned. For example, Charlie Hodge, who had lived at the mansion for a number of years, and had sort of become part of the family, moved out. Several different stories have been told about how he was told to leave by Vernon, but that was not exactly the way it happened.

Obviously, Charlie expected to do something to earn what Vernon was paying him. With Elvis gone, that limited the number of things left for him to do at Graceland. Vernon asked him if he would help work security at the meditation garden, keeping an eye on Elvis’ gravesite. Charlie did do that for a short while. It got to the point where he would go down to the gravesite once a week and keep an eye on everything. With so much time on his hands, he decided to try and get back into something of his own. He decided that he wanted to try and manage a small musical group there in Memphis, and began doing that. When Vernon found out about that, he gave Charlie the option of just working for Graceland or moving on, and Charlie decided it was time to move on.

Billy Smith, who had moved his family into a doublewide mobile home on the back of the property that Elvis had provided for him, also moved out. There were some bad feelings over that. He had assumed that Elvis had given him the mobile home as his own, and informed Vernon that he was planning to move it off the grounds somewhere else. Vernon, on the other hand, told Billy that Elvis had never intended that the mobile home be given to Billy, and informed him that it would have to stay. Billy, who had been a faithful family member as well as friend and employee to Elvis for so many years, had to leave with nothing to show for his years of service.

Vernon moved into the annex apartment, after it had been updated, in 1978, after getting a divorce in the Domican Republic from Dee Presley. The redecorated annex apartment contained two bedrooms, two baths, a new kitchen, and a living room area. It was quite beautiful after he completed it. He continued running the affairs of Graceland from the office out back, with the help of several different secretaries.

He had begun dating a nurse, Sandy Miller, and the two of them had become very close. She had three children from a former marriage and Vernon got along with them very well. Things were starting to look up for him again. His health, however, was starting to deteriorate. His heart continued to give him problems.

On October 26th, 1978, we had to call an ambulance for him because he was complaining of chest pains. He was taken to Baptist Hospital, the same hospital Elvis had been taken to, at about 3:30 that afternoon. It was determined that he had suffered another heart attack. The doctors told us that it was serious but that he was stable.

I went to visit him the next day. He had told me over the phone that he was hungry. In a weak voice, he laughed and told me, “Nancy, you know how much I hate hospital food, and this is some of the worst I’ve ever seen. I sure would like to have some of your home cooking.”

So, I took him what he’d asked for: chopped steak, string beans, mustard greens, a baked potato, and hot rolls. He ate every bit of it.

The doctor told us that he seemed to be doing better.

The next day I again honored his food request. This time, he ate fried chicken, cabbage and cornbread.

As he ate, we got to talking about farming. “I’ve always loved farming”, he told me. He asked me if my husband was still doing a lot of farming, and I told him yes. He said, “Will you have him plant some peas and white corn for me?”, and I told him that I would do that.

By early November, he was well enough to go home. Even though he looked very frail and tired, he was, nonetheless, very glad to get home again.

He tried, on the advice of his doctors, to walk a little bit each day, but it was just more than he could handle because of his weakness. We ended up wheeling him around the mansion most of the time in a wheelchair. We would wheel him in to his mother’s room and they would spend time talking to each other. Dodger was not in much better shape than he was, and she, too, was starting to rely heavily on a wheelchair. Sometimes we would take the two of them together, in their wheelchairs, around the grounds of Graceland, just to get them out of the house.

He got to where he was losing his appetite on a fairly regular basis, and, because of that, began losing weight, making him appear even more frail. On several occasions, I was able to get him to eat some dumplings, corn, and peas, which he had always loved, and that gave us a little hope that maybe he was getting better.

Sadly, however, that was not the case. It got to the point where they were having to keep him on an oxygen machine a lot of the time. It seemed as if the only time we saw his eyes light up was when Lisa came in to visit him from Los Angeles. He really did love his granddaughter.

He passed away on the morning of June 26th, 1979. Another legend was now gone from Graceland.

He, like his son, laid in state in the same spot in the living room, in front of the music room doors. Afterward, a service was conducted with friends and family attending, and, on a warm sunny day, his casket was then carried out the front door, and wheeled down to a waiting grave, between his son and his first wife, in the meditation garden.

Less than a year later, in May of 1980, Dodger died peacefully, while lying in her bed late one night. As maids, we had taken turns sitting in a chair with her, around the clock, in case she needed anything. I had gone home earlier in the evening, and was not there when she passed away.

I did not see her again until they brought her back into the house to lay in state, again, in the same living room where Elvis had been. Those funerals were beginning to get very stressful on everyone. She looked so pretty in a blue dress and with her black hair. We had become very close friends over the years, and I still miss her terribly. Though not as large a crowd as Vernon, she still had a sizable group of friends and family to see her off. She, too, was laid to rest in the meditation garden, completing the family plot. The family was together again, at last.

After Dodger died, the office out back was not opened every day. The secretaries were eventually let go, and the maids began answering what phone calls still made their way into the mansion.

Jobs that had once been held by trusted family members gave way to “hired help” that could not always be trusted to do the right thing. The personal touches that used to keep the mansion running were slowly giving way to the more commercial ways of doing business. People that worked together and had shared a bond of being able to trust one another were disappearing. The “human touch” was slowly fading away.

A few months before she died, Dodger had gotten tired of the way things were changing around Graceland. She felt that people were being hired who did not have the family’s best interests at heart and she wanted “the world to know about it.” She got so frustrated at one point that she had actually called one of the local TV stations and told them to send a camera crew out to the front porch of Graceland, so she could give them a statement about how she felt. She was already in her wheelchair and had instructed me to wheel her to the front door when, at the last minute, Aunt Delta finally was able to talk her out of it. But she continued to feel that way up to the day she finally died. She had been the stabilizing force, the feminine touch, that had kept Graceland going, and now she was gone.

That left Aunt Delta living alone at Graceland. She continued living in her bedroom, located off the kitchen, near the garage. The bedroom is a surprisingly spacious room, furnished with a king size bed and the usual assortment of bedroom furniture. It had originally been a maid’s room when the house was first built, and became Aunt Delta’s bedroom when she moved into Graceland in 1967. The room has it’s own clothes closet, as well as a full bath with a window looking out over the front lawn of the mansion. Many visitors taking the tour of the house are not even aware of the bedroom, since it not part of the tour. The door leading into her bedroom is at the far end of the kitchen, slightly to the right as you look into the kitchen. It is located behind the curtain wall immediately to your left as you walk down the hallway with the jungle room on your right, after having come up the stairs from the basement. In fact, if you run your hand along that curtain wall to your left as you’re walking toward the annex of the house, you’ll feel a recessed opening behind the curtains. That is where the door was originally located which led into that bedroom.

We sensed an occasional loneliness that Aunt Delta felt after Elvis, then Vernon, and finally Dodger, had died. It must have been a terrible feeling to have been the last surviving Presley still living at Graceland. We cooked, cleaned, and ran the house essentially the same as we always had. We still decorated for the holidays the same as we always had.

She would occasionally have friends over to visit, and we would prepare meals for them. But, for the most part, she devoted her time and attention to her dog, Edmund, a Pomeranian given to her by Elvis.

Sadly, the dog died and we buried it, complete with a small headstone, in the back pasture area, near the fence on the side of the property. She got another Pomeranian, which was promptly named Edmond II.

That dog continued to live the life of luxury, being pampered and showered with great affection, just as the original one had. Several of the staff members used to tease that they wanted to come back in their next life as one of Aunt Delta’s dogs. Aunt Delta was always careful to make sure we all treated the dog well.

Aunt Delta passed away in her sleep in 1993. She, like Vernon, suffered from declining health, and, near the end, was bedridden much of the time. Though she would be greatly missed, her passing was probably a blessing, taking her out of her suffering.

Her funeral was not held at Graceland. Instead, a small service was held for her in the chapel at Forest Hills Cemetery, and she was laid to rest in a grave not too far from where Elvis and Gladys had originally been buried. Several dozen family & friends were there to give their last respects at the private service.

After her death, the kitchen was opened as part of the tour. It’s hard to drive by the mansion at night, as I sometimes do, and know that the rooms are all empty now, except for the occasional maintenance worker or cleaning crew. After so many years, and so much activity, it’s hard to imagine that no one is there anymore.

I’m sure that Aunt Delta had never counted on being the last Presley to live in the house when she moved into it in 1967. Her death signaled the end of a magnificent legend. A part of Graceland died with her, the last occupant of a grand old house that had seen it’s share of good and bad times. It stands today, a mansion with many silent memories.

I am so thankful to have been a part of the activities that took place Inside Graceland.