When Elvis died

I think John Lennon's death was the first celebrity death that I really remember...

 

I had this conversation with my parents last night - asking them if they remembered when Elvis died. Then we discussed other big events and if we recall where we were.

LSS hit a few we mentioned, but some I consider big "I remember exactly what I was doing when this happened" events include: Princess Diana's death, the OJ white ford bronco chase, the Berlin Wall collapsing, and Baby Jessica being pulled out of the well.

 

I was about two weeks away from my 11th birthday and enjoying my last few weeks of summer vacation. I don't remember what I was doing when I found out he was dead but I was probably out in the street playing baseball with my buddies.

I do remember watching Good Morning America the next morning and my mom crying.

 

i was on the athletic staff at a catskills' resort. about to run a volleyball tournament. :'( :'( :'(

 

It was just after my senior year in high school. I had already started working for small newspapers, but it was summer and there wasn't much work in sports once the high schools got out and, anyway, I made more money in a restaurant than I did at the paper.

It had been a couple summers of Elvis torture. The guy who ran the place played nothing but Elvis on the eight-track behind the counter. I doubt there's even an obscure Elvis song I haven't heard at least 10 times.

The boss was burly with black hair that he wore in an early Elvis style and immense hairy forearms that he left exposed even in cold weather, and he drove an Edsel sometimes. He had been a construction worker before he married the owner. He was uneducated but far from stupid. Mostly kids worked there and most of us had mixed feelings about the boss. Eddie could be unreasonably and bizarrely tough -- my first summer, he fired one of my coworkers because in his view, the kid let his girlfriend boss him around, a violation of his code of manliness. (When I started dating one of the girls who worked there I told her she could give me shit on the ride home till her heart's content, just don't ever do it in front of Eddie.) On the other hand, there was no pretense with him; if he told you something, you knew it was the truth, or at least the truth as he honestly saw it. Years later when I was working on my first big-city newspaper, I told him he taught me how to work, and I meant it. But what I learned from him the day Elvis died was that even the most macho of men could cry.

I think most of us who had at least half a brain and any soul at all had a love-hate relationship with Eddie. When he wasn't being a total dick, you couldn't help but like the guy. He had this swaggering persona that would have looked like a ridiculous caricature if you didn't instinctively know from the first meeting that this was not an affectation, this is who he was.

It was someone else's idea that we chip in and buy Eddie a birthday gift, and it was my idea that it would be two tickets to an Elvis concert a couple hours away later that month. It was a spontaneous idea; someone already had tried shopping for some other gift that I can't recall. But everyone liked the idea. Another kid would drive to the nearest ticket outlet in the next county and buy the tickets. The kid was a stoner who listened to his tapes on the ride, never turned on the radio. When he got there and asked for two Elvis tickets, please, he was told that Elvis had died. On Eddie's birthday.

Eddie didn't work for a few days. But he called that night at work and I talked to him. His wife had told him about his intended birthday gift. "What you guys done ..." he said, and he could say no more. Heaving sobs followed.

Months later I wrote about this for a freshman English class and I wish I still had it. It was the only freshman paper that the school gave to a visiting novelist who was holding a few days of readings and critiques. He read it out loud and later he took me aside and said, "I'm not saying you could get this published -- I'm not -- but I think you could make a living at this." I floated for a few weeks, and when school let out I went back to work for Eddie. His wife said to me one night that someday I would write about them. "I already have," I said.

 

I remember hearing about it during class in school. I think it sucks that I was in school on Aug. 16.

 

I was at a YMCA summer camp when I heard the news. I was 8. I never have been much of an Elvis fan, but I know I felt bad when I heard the news.

 

When Elvis dies, I'll log on and let you know where I was.

 

In the waiting lounge at Story Olds-Datsun in Lansing, Mich., waiting for the mechanics to finish servicing the family B210. I was 7.

 

The Iranian hostages being freed, the Reagan assassination, the Challenger Explosion, the OJ Bronco chase, the OJ verdict, Oklahoma City bombing, Princess Di's death, the Branch Davidian raid, 9/11/01, Columbia, I can tell you where I was for all of those.
As to where I was when I heard about Lennon's death, I don't remember. For some reason I don't think I heard about it until the 11 p.m. news that night.

 

Coincidentally, that was the same car I had just bought when Elvis died.

 

I was five and the whole family was at the beach together at Fripp Island. My aunt was glued to the TV the entire time. Nobody else seemed to give a shit.