Here is a picture of me graciously taken by Elvis Presley’s first cousin, Harold Loyd in May 1976 at the famous Graceland gates in Memphis, Tennessee. I was president of the official Texas Chapter of the Elvis Presley-Graceland Fan Club and had one goal on my mind: to meet and interview the most famous entertainer in music history.
Using my connections with the Memphis chapter of the Fan Club, and befriending people like Loyd, who was also a guard at the front Graceland gates, and another guard George Stoll. Through them, I was able to meet Elvis’ Uncle Vester Presley, his cousin Billy Smith, friend (and the guy who gave Elvis the scarfs during his 1970s concerts on stage) Charlie Hodge, a disabled friend Gary Pepper and his nurse.
Today, hundreds of thousands of people visit Graceland each year, but in 1976 it was a rarity for any average person like myself to be able to go through the gates or on the lawn.
I was fortunate to ride with Uncle Vester to deliver the large mailbags to Elvis’ father Vernon’s secretary (but it wasn’t Becky Yancey, because I think she was not working there anymore by then. It’s been so many years now, it could have been “Pauline,” “Paulette” or something like that) in the office behind the mansion.
I was also able to step inside the backdoor at the kitchen (and met a cook, but I never knew her name) briefly as Vester stepped in for a moment.
That evening, I asked Harold about how I should act if I get the opportunity to meet Elvis.
“Just be natural and easy going,” Harold smiled. “Be yourself. Elvis loves his fans. Be positive and just because he may have heard it a thousand times, don’t worry about it. He’s like anyone in that he doesn’t want to hear anything phony. Don’t you like compliments?”
“Yes sir, I do,” I replied, understanding what he was conveying.
Harold told me a story, a lesson he learned, about Elvis from the 1960s. He had only been guarding the gates for about a year or so. Elvis and his entourage left Graceland to go to a local movie theater.
“I needed to go to the restroom bad,” Loyd said. “And I knew when they went to see the movies they might not be back until early morning because they might not just watch one movie. They might watch a bunch of them. Well, I turned out the light in here (guard house) and made sure the gates were secure. Then I walked up to go to the bathroom and check around the house a bit.”
“Well sure enough, here they came,” Loyd continued. “There were a bunch of cars and Elvis was in the front car, a Buick Riviera, just honking away. I started running back fast as I could but dang if he just blasted right through the gates.”
“He was mad as hell,” Harold remembered. “He yelled at me ‘I’m not waiting for you!’ and those gates scraped across the sides of his Buick as he went through them. I don’t know what it cost to fix everything, but I do know I definitely learned my lesson about manning these gates. I never go up to the house unless I see if someone can relieve me.”
Sure enough, late in the night Harold showed me how to open and close the gates just in case. Elvis was at home, but there were not many fans out front because they were all at the local Shelby County arena waiting in line for tickets to a home show coming up that summer. It would be the first concert Elvis had in Memphis in quite a while, so all big fans were excited.
As fate would have it, Harold needed to go use the restroom. There were four airline stewardesses (the airport was not that far away, so during their trips to Memphis, they told they would also try to come by Graceland to get a glimpse of Elvis) just outside the closed gates. So Harold decided to walk down the front wall a bit and go behind a tree to be safely away from the airline attendants.
“Watch the gates for me, Jack,” he said as he walked away. “You just never know. I will be right back.”
Sure enough, about that same time a motorcycle started coming around the back left side of the mansion and headed down toward us. I waited in the doorway in reach of the gate button, hoping Harold would be back soon. As the motorcycle approached, the ladies started screaming, “It’s him. It’s Elvis!”
I was a nervous wreck and didn’t know if I should push the button or not.
As Elvis Presley, the King of Rock n’ Roll, neared, I could see his girlfriend, Linda Thompson was on the back of his motorcycle. He had a cigar is his mouth. He looked at me and gestured for me to stop—not open the gates. But he indeed stopped. He put his kickstand down, got off his motorcycle, gestured with one finger to his mouth, a “shhhhush” motion and asked, “Where is Harold?”
My mind was in limbo. I was almost paralyzed, but managed to point back behind the guardhouse, “He went out there, but he will be right back.”
Elvis’ face shined with that familiar famous grin as he walked back there.
“Hey, Harold,” Elvis laughed loudly. “What’ you doing back there?”
I don’t recall what Harold told him, but as they walked back toward the guardhouse one of the airline ladies yelled out, “Oh, Elvis. I love you, Elvis!”
Elvis shrugged and answered back, “I love you too, Honey, but thars’ nothing I can do about it right now,” as he pointed to Linda sitting patiently on the back of his black and gold Harley-Davidson.
“Who is this?” Elvis looked at me and put out his hand.
“I’m Jack,” I replied rapidly and nervously. Then slowly, “Jack…. Dennis” came out of my mouth.
Before he could reply, I was stunned to be shaking his hand and blurted out, “I’m from San Antonio…(pause)…Texas!” Oh, my goodness, he knows where San Antonio is. How stupid of me, I thought. And then, without giving him a chance to respond, I blurted out once more, “My father is a policeman there!”
Elvis laughed and obviously in a good mood, finally speaking, “A patrol officer?”
“No sir,” I replied. “He’s a detective, a homicide detective.”
Elvis pulled out a badge from his black motorcycle jacket. It read: “Deputy Sheriff, Shelby County.” I touched it and then complimented it.
“So, what are you doing here in Memphis?” he asked. The moment was extremely surreal, because after seeing him in movies, magazines, newspapers and television over the years, I felt comfortable. He was genuinely nice to me.
“Well, I’m your fan club president in Texas and also a journalism student at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos,” I replied. “I told my professor I was going to try and interview you.”
“What did he say about that?” Elvis responded, grinning.
“He laughed about the same as you are,” I laughed.
“So, go ahead,” Elvis Presley said to me. “Interview away.”
I asked him about this motorcycle. It was like a teenage boy showing a young kid his new bicycle. He had just bought it and was very proud about it. He also mentioned he felt some freedom because the fans were all in line buying concert tickets and he was pleased about that.
“Are you going to go ride over there?” I asked. “I was there a day ago and they were camping out in lawn chairs and tents.
“Oh, no.” he chuckled. “Don’t want to disrupt them. I need them to stay in line and buy those tickets.”
What I will never forget after returning back to college, was telling my professor, Jeff Henderson, when he asked, “Did you get to interview the King?”
“Yes, I interviewed him.”
The shock on his face said it all. He gave me a hearty embrace and took me into the office of Dean of the School of Journalism, Heber Taylor. He was just as startled as Henderson was.
Interviewing Elvis was a time I will never forget, along with the looks on people’s faces both there in Memphis, and back in Texas. It was monumental to my life because it showed that if I set my mind to something, and by the grace of God, with prayers and determination, I could accomplish the most challenging things.
I often wondered about Elvis’s badge. Over the years I discovered it wasn’t just that one badge.
“He had a million badges and a blue police light on his car,” Priscilla Presley, once said of the man to whom she was married from 1967–73. Her words appear in “Elvis, By the Presleys,” a 2005 book comprised of quotes from her, their daughter, and others who knew him.
“He liked nothing more than putting that light on his car and pulling people over. He’d walk up to the window, show off his official badge and say, ‘Son, you were speeding. Just want to warn you to slow down.’”
“The driver would see him and remain speechless. He liked seeing himself as a (lawman) and protector of the public. He carried guns, and if he happened to see, for instance, two men fighting at a gas station, he’d drive over and stop the fight. His very presence stopped things from escalating.”
Bobbie Ann Mason, in her 2007 book, “Elvis Presley: A Life,” elaborated on the gas station incident which took place in Madison, Wisconsin:
“Elvis loved acting out his childhood fantasy of cops and robbers. At home he had a growing arsenal of guns and a wardrobe of Superfly private-eye outfits. Several years after he got his badge, he was passing by a gas station when he saw two men assaulting a station attendant. Elvis stopped, bounded out of his limo, and broke up the fight with some karate moves. The participants were so amazed to see Elvis Presley that they stopped fighting, and Elvis posed for pictures with them.”
“Elvis…obtained a police radio and a revolving blue light to put on top of his Lincoln Mark IV. He began to patrol the streets of Memphis. Sometimes, listening to the scanner, he would jump on his motorcycle and make it to an accident or the scene of a crime before the police did. He would help out or direct traffic until they arrived.”
Over the last decade or so of his life, Elvis acquired at least five sheriff badges, along with duplicates of them, from Shelby County
“When I was sheriff I deputized Elvis,” William N. Morris is quoted as recounting in the April 2012 issue of Memphis Magazine. Morris headed the Sheriff’s Department from 1964-70, later serving as county mayor.
Back then, a sheriff in Tennessee had the power to appoint “special deputies.” However, the appointments were usually short-lived and for undertaking a specific task, such as serving papers.
“The sheriff may appoint as many special deputies as the sheriff may think proper,” a statute spells out, “on urgent occasions, or when required for particular purposes.”
That’s been the law since 1870.
An 1857 opinion of the Supreme Court of Tennessee says that prior to 1845, only sheriffs could make arrests; that under legislation enacted that year, deputies now had arrest power; and that there was no reason not to recognize such power being vested in special deputies. So, Presley would have possessed a power of arrest on an occasion (if any) when he was performing duties as a special deputy. He otherwise had only the power possessed by any private person of making a citizen’s arrest.
A 1905 Tennessee Supreme Court decision defines a “special deputy” as one who is “assigned to a special case or transaction.” A 1961 decision of the court says a sheriff may appoint a special deputy “for any particular occasion.”
The badge shown here was bestowed on Elvis by Morris, was auctioned at Graceland a few years back and fetched $8,750 (The flashing blue police light he placed atop his car went for $2,000.) The late Marty Lacker, a friend of one of the Memphis Mafia entourage, said Elvis “gave me the badge when I received my Sheriff’s Deputy commission either in 1969 or 1970,” and notes:
“This is the same badge I am holding in the picture of Elvis and the guys all holding our badges in December, 1970 at Graceland which appears in many Elvis books.”
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Loralyn ‘Dodie’ & Jack Dennis
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That’s a super good read and great photos. It’s great-guarding Elvis’ gate and getting an interview; thrill of a lifetime. And look at all that hair you’ve got!
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I miss that hair! 😊
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This was a captivating account of your encounter with Elvis-a fun read. My husband and I recently returned from a Christian bus trip to Noah’s Ark and Nashville. Our group recorded an amusing song in Studio B where Elvis recorded some of his hits. I took pictures of the X mark where Elvis stood to sing and the piano that he played on. Elvis songs blasted as the tour guide discussed his trials and tribulations when he recorded certain music after returning from the army. It was an awesome experience-but pales compared to yours! 🙂
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