Inside Graceland: Elvis' Maid Remembers (10 page)

She spent hours, often with one or two of her friends onboard, exploring the far reaches of her “kingdom.”

One day, I was doing something outside and saw her, by herself, drive the cart over to the side wall. I was close enough to hear her as she told a fan, who was looking over the side wall, that they were not supposed to be there. Apparently, the fan asked, “Who are you?”, and Lisa, standing up to her full height on the golf cart, yelled, “I OWN this place! It’s all MINE! That’s who I am!” She then quickly drove off as I was scrambling to call security. This was HER house, and, like her daddy, she was going to defend it if she had to.

A golf cart was responsible for one of Lisa’s nurses being fired, when Lisa was much younger. The nurse, a lady from Germany, had recently been hired by Priscilla to watch Lisa. She had just put Lisa down for a nap and, having gone out back for a break, apparently saw one of Elvis’ golf carts sitting there and had decided to “take it for a spin.” Having apparently never driven a golf cart before, she was not familiar with how to control it. She drove it around the side driveway to the front of the house, down the winding driveway, and right into the front rock wall, just to the left of the guard shack.

She had to be taken to the hospital for some minor injuries and was promptly fired by Priscilla when she got back to the house. We were all so thankful that she had not had little Lisa with her at the time.

The nurse hired to replace her did not last long either. She was rather elderly and frequently had to leave early to go home because she would tire easily. That meant Aunt Delta and I would often end up having to babysit Lisa.

The two of us sat many an evening on that daybed in Lisa’s room, talking about everything under the sun, as we waited for Lisa to fall off to sleep.

Delta once said to me, “I don’t really know how to watch over a baby. I never had one of my own.” She went on to tell me how she felt much more comfortable with just her little dog, Edmund. She laughed and said, “Maybe I like dogs better than people because they don’t talk back like people do.”

Like all young people, Lisa would occasionally get bored around the house. When she was younger, she and a friend of hers would play a game with the telephone that they had made up. They would put random numbers together, to make up a phone number, and then dial that number. They would keep doing that until they got a number that answered. Once they got someone on the phone, they would try to engage them in some nonsensical conversation. The routines about Prince Albert in a can, or “Is your house on the bus line?”, the kind of pranks we all grew up with. Of course, it was all done as harmless fun. (I often wondered, as I listened to their conversations, what the person on the other end of the line would have thought had they known they were getting prank calls from the daughter of Elvis Presley.) I also wondered what Elvis would have said, had he found out what they were doing. But, like so many other things, that remained a secret between me and Lisa.

It seemed that everything she did growing up was cute. Like most children, when she was very young, she could make a mess out of something in a heartbeat. On numerous occasions, I would come into a room and find her with something all over either her or the floor.

On one such occasion, I had found her with make-up smeared all over her face and, without thinking, yelled, “Lord, have mercy, child!” For several weeks afterward I would hear her adorable little voice in the next room yelling, as loud as she could, “Lord, have mercy, child!”

I often marveled at how adorable she was, just sitting in front of the TV, watching her favorite show, “Sesame Street.” She got such a kick out of watching, and then imitating, Big Bird and Bert and Ernie.

Those of us who had the opportunity to watch her grow up treated the experience as if it was our own child we were raising. We shared in the highs, as well as the lows, in her life. We all took it very seriously. Not just because we were expected to, but because we loved her, and wanted to.

Consequently, when she left for California after the divorce, it was like losing a member of our own family. And, when she came back to visit, as she frequently did, it was like a family member returning home.

Even after she got married the first time, and moved to Florida with her husband, Danny Keough, we all still felt a sense of responsibility toward her.

Like all young married couples, she had occasional problems early in the marriage. I think she was truly in love with Danny, but, after they moved to Florida, she began calling Graceland. I took several phone calls myself, only to find her crying on the other end of the line, asking to speak to Aunt Delta. At first, Aunt Delta was sympathetic and would take the calls.

Eventually, however, she began refusing to take the calls at all. Several times she said to me, with Lisa holding on the line, “I don’t think that’s really Lisa. Hang up.” Still concerned for Lisa, I would say, “But Mrs. Delta, what if she’s hurt or really in trouble?”, and she would say, “Well, even if it is her, she’ll find her way out of it.” And I would have to tell Lisa that Aunt Delta wasn’t available to take her call. She seemed to believe that Lisa needed to learn to handle the problems herself. In any case, I got to where I was feeling put in the middle, and it made me very uncomfortable.

I’ve often been asked what I thought of Lisa’s marriage to Michael Jackson. People would call me up and ask, “Do you think they’re really married?”. I always replied, “Yes, they are definitely married.” My feeling was that Michael could never be a father to her children. It just wasn’t in his heart. I think that, for a while, anyway, Lisa enjoyed seeing Michael in the spotlight.

I believe that it was more a marriage of convenience and friendship than anything else. They did not need each other’s money. Michael was a star in the limelight, just like Elvis had been. Their marriage only lasted 18 months. I was surprised it lasted that long. I was just glad that Michael never tried to “use” Lisa Marie for any bad reason. I don’t think Elvis would have approved of that marriage. I believe that Lisa’s first, and only, true love is Danny, the father of her two children.

Then, the world was surprised by the announcement that she had married Nicholas Cage. And that marriage was so short that it is not even worth talking about.

My one dream for Lisa is that, one day, she’ll find happiness and contentment. I hold onto that dream for her, amid all the seemingly shipwrecked marriages so far, and hope that someday she’ll find the right person for her.

“LORD, PLEASE SAVE MY BOY!”
 

Au
gust 16th, 1977, started out as just another hot summer
da
y in Memphis. Elvis was about to begin another grueling concert tour, and the activity level around Graceland was building to reflect that. The size and complexity of his concerts had grown to the point where many hours and days of planning and coordination were needed to prepare for everyone’s departure.

Elvis was a musical superstar. Though he had gained weight and, some fans were complaining, lost some of his enthusiasm, he was still adored by his numerous fans, and his concerts were still blockbuster, and usually sold out, events. His own generation never gave up on him, and there were now legions of new fans that had come to appreciate his unparalleled, legendary, on-stage performances.

I, along with other domestic staff members, never had much out of the ordinary to do, other than our usual duties, but we could always sense the pressure and stress on Elvis and those around him as they prepared to go on the road for weeks at a time. An unbelievable amount of time, money, and hard work went into the planning and logistics of these massive events.

When I got to work that Tuesday morning, I remember thinking that it was going to be another hot Memphis summer day. I had gotten to work early, I think about six a.m., and the heat and humidity had already started to build. An early morning light rain had failed to cool things down.

Pauline told me when I first walked in that Elvis and Ginger were out back in the racquetball court playing with his cousin, Billy Smith, and Billy’s wife, Jo.

I put my pocketbook up and, shortly after, Elvis came in through the back door. Billy and Ginger were with him, and I seem to remember that it was around 6:30. Elvis looked like he had been working up a little bit of a sweat.

I asked him, “Mr. Elvis, can I fix you something to eat?”

“No thanks, Nancy.” he replied, and then added, “I’m not hungry right now, but I’m really thirsty and would really like some ice water, and then all I want to do is get some sleep.”

The three of them disappeared up the back stairway and I fixed him a glass of ice water, which Pauline then took upstairs to him.

When she came back downstairs she said something that seemed a little odd to me. She said, “He practically grabbed the water out of my hand!”, which was not like him at all. I didn’t think any more about it at the time.

Pauline then left, leaving me by myself for the day. One of the other cooks was supposed to have been on duty that day to help me but hadn’t shown up. Aunt Delta told me she would help me with the cleaning, but, since she didn’t like to cook, I knew I would be doing most of the work by myself.

I went about my routine as usual. I had cleaned Mrs. Minnie’s room, then Aunt Delta’s, had dusted and straightened up the den and the living room downstairs. I had fixed Mrs. Minnie some lunch, had a quick cup of coffee with her, and she had then returned to her bedroom.

Pauline informed me before leaving that morning that Elvis had had a very restless night, as was common on the days leading up to one of his tours. He and Ginger had gone out the night before, riding his motorcycle through the streets around Graceland, killing time and trying to take the stress of the upcoming tour off him.

It was not at all unusual for him to be gone for hours at a time after dark, just riding all around the streets in and around Whitehaven. It was something he loved doing, in part, I think, because it offered him the rare opportunity to get out of the house without being recognized, and thus mobbed, by his ever present fans.

He and Ginger had then returned to the house, sometime after ten o’clock.

Elvis had hoped to rent a local theater to see one of his usual private screenings of a movie, I think it was “MacArthur”, but for some reason that had not worked out.

Ricky had gone to the Pizza Hut down the street on Elvis Presley Boulevard and brought back spaghetti and meatballs for the whole group, but I’m not sure if Elvis ate any of it.

Then, sometime around ten thirty, Elvis and Ginger went to his dentist to have some routine dental work done, and had returned to Graceland an hour or so later.

I heard from one of the other staff members, I don’t remember who, that Elvis was not in a good mood, for several reasons. We all knew that he was worried about the new book that had just been released a few weeks earlier, the book written by his former bodyguards. This upcoming tour was to be the first time he would be facing his fans after the book had come out, and he was concerned about how his fans would react to it when he walked onstage. In addition to the frustration of not being able to get the movie rented the night before, which he had been looking forward to, he and Ginger were also spatting back and forth about various things. Mary Jenkins had walked in on them the night before, finding them sitting in the dark in Lisa’s room, arguing, as she put it, “Rather forcefully”, about whether she was going to accompany him on the tour the next day. So things had not been going well for Elvis that Monday night.

They had decided to play a game of racquetball, no doubt to further help Elvis try to calm down, and that’s where they were when I had come in.

I had not heard anymore from Elvis since he had gone upstairs after coming in from playing racquetball. I vaguely remember, as I was going about my routine that morning, both Ricky, and, then Aunt Delta, delivering some of Elvis’s medications upstairs to him through the course of the morning.

There was nothing unusual about that. Over the years, Elvis had developed a lot of health problems, not the least of which was a very bad case of insomnia. Like so many people in stressful careers, he found it difficult, if not impossible at times, to fall off to sleep. He had, with the help of his doctors, developed a system of taking medications before trying to sleep. Over the years, these had become stronger as his tolerance to them changed, and they lost their effect on him. He also suffered from a variety of medical ailments which left him in terrible pain at times.

People have asked me over the years if I had seen how bad the prescription use had become. As I look back on it, the only thing I can remember is watching him in pain a lot of the time, and seeing him feeling the tremendous stresses of keeping up with a schedule that would have been impossible for most people to tolerate, and I think it just became normal to see him trying to do things to accommodate that demand.

It’s not that so many of us were not concerned for him, it’s just that it became so routine. Looking back on it, I remember Aunt Delta telling me, just several months before, as we stood out by the racquetball court one morning, that she was afraid that if “If he doesn’t stop taking so many drugs, I’m afraid he’s going to die.” But, even so, she continued to take him whatever medications he would ask for. We just all wanted to try and make his life as comfortable for him as we could.

So when those medications were taken to him that fateful Tuesday morning, it was no different to those of us around him than me taking an aspirin for a headache.

I don’t remember who was in the house at the time. It seems like Ricky was asleep downstairs in the pool room. Charlie was in his room, as was Dodger in hers. I had seen Al Strada bring in several of the packing containers used to carry some of Elvis’ wardrobe, and they were scattered around the jungle room. Joe was back in the office, located behind the main house.

I had finished my chores downstairs and sat down at the kitchen counter to take a break. I was watching a soap opera, I think it was
As
The
World
Turns
, when, suddenly, the intercom phone rang from Elvis’ bedroom.

I picked up the phone expecting to hear Elvis’ voice, still half asleep, wanting to order his usual breakfast. Instead, I heard Ginger’s voice, and she sounded breathless and very worried, like I had never heard her before.

At first, she asked if Ricky, Al, or any of the other bodyguards were close by. I told her that I was the only one in the kitchen area, that Aunt Delta had taken off for Lowenstein’s Department Store to buy some last minute items for Elvis, and Al had gone to Walgreen’s, but I was expecting him back most any minute.

Ginger then began sobbing uncontrollably into the phone, saying “Something is terribly wrong with Elvis!”

I tried to calm her down, but the more she talked, the more distraught she became, sounding almost hysterical, finally reaching the point where I could not understand what she was trying to say.

My first reaction was to run upstairs to see what was wrong. I hung up the phone and ran as quickly as I could up the back stairs, across the landing, and turned right into the upstairs hallway. The padded black doors going into his bedroom were closed so I rushed past them, turned right, down the hallway, and walked slowly through the open door, on the left, leading into his dressing room.

Not seeing anything out of the ordinary, I slowly walked through the dressing room toward the opening leading into his bathroom, unsure of what I was even looking for. My heart was pounding. Everyone in the house, including me, knew that this was his private sanctum, and, as such, we all respected that and tried to honor his privacy whenever he was home. Doors were never locked upstairs because he knew no one would ever dare to intrude on him unless summoned.

I was quietly saying, “Mr. Elvis, are you ok, is everything all right?”

Not getting an answer, I crept closer to the entrance, finally reaching the point where I could actually see into his bathroom.

My heart sank as I saw him. I had not actually entered the bathroom itself, but could see his reflection in a mirror mounted along the wall leading into the room.

He was lying on the floor, with his face buried in the thick red shag bathroom carpet. It appeared that he had been sitting on the commode and had apparently tried to stand up, taken a few steps, and then fallen forward onto the carpet. His pajama bottoms were down around his ankles, and I could see his bare behind pointing slightly up into the air.

My first thought was pure panic. I think I instinctively knew he was dead, but it was such a shock finding him like that. Here was the world’s most famous entertainer in such an unflattering and embarrassing position. I knew I had to get help.

As I was turning around to head back downstairs, I noticed that the door leading into his bedroom, the room that Ginger was apparently still in, was closed enough that I could not see inside the bedroom.

In almost a state of sheer panic myself, and not knowing exactly what I should do, I decided that, since I didn’t know first aid, the best thing for me to do would be to go and get help. I was still feeling a little uncomfortable, out of habit, being upstairs without having actually been summoned by Elvis himself. Just a force of habit, I guess.

Running as fast as I could back down the stairs, I was greatly relieved to see Al Strada walking in through the back door. Seeing the panic in my eyes, he knew immediately that something was wrong. I screamed to him that he needed to go upstairs and check on Elvis, that he was lying unconscious on his bathroom floor. He went flying by me and climbed the back stairs two at a time.

After what seemed like only a few seconds, he came back downstairs, meeting me at the bottom of the stairs, where I still stood, feeling helpless. In a breathless voice he told me that he needed help, and that Elvis was in serious trouble.

Growing more anxious with each passing second, I screamed, “Do something, Al. Do something!”

At about that time Joe Esposito came running into the house. He may have been back in Vernon’s office, and Ginger had apparently called back there for help after I’d spoken with her.

Joe and Al ran back upstairs, and then, shortly, Vernon came through the door, with his niece, Patsy, literally helping to support him. They were both visibly shaking. Vernon, having been through several recent heart attacks, was not in good health himself, and, as the two came through the patio door they were holding hands and Vernon was crying. He kept repeating, “Lord, save him! Lord, please save my boy!” Slowly, with Patsy’s help, the two of them disappeared up the stairs.

Just as Vernon and Patsy had been coming through the kitchen, Charlie Hodge came walking in, not aware of what was going on. Charlie headed straight for the coffee pot to get himself a cup of coffee when he saw that Vernon was visibly upset. Thinking that one of us had just played a practical joke on Vernon, a rather common practice, Charlie began to make fun of Vernon.

I screamed, “Charlie, this is no joke! Something is wrong with Mr. Elvis!”

Seeing the obvious tension and concern, Charlie’s face went white, and he too headed upstairs. (I later heard from someone that Charlie was getting ready to try and give Elvis CPR but that everyone agreed it was too late for that.)

Even though most everyone seemed to sense that Elvis was already dead, we all still tried to hold on to some small glimmer of hope that he might pull out of this if we could just get him to the hospital.

Trying to keep my emotions in check, I stayed downstairs for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for the medical team to arrive. I watched the small television monitor above the kitchen counter until I saw the ambulance pull through the lower gates and head up the circular driveway in front of the house.