Since I’d stopped working for Elvis, it had become harder for us to spend this kind of time together. But it felt easy and satisfying to be sitting with him again, sipping coffee and talking friend to friend. It was getting close to sunset when he told me that his weekend trip wasn’t over.
“Jerry, I’m going back to Washington. Tonight. I need you to come with me.”
“Elvis, I’ve got a job. I have to be at work tomorrow.”
“I’ll charter a Learjet to fly you back.”
If his spending habits were getting him into trouble, I didn’t want him hiring a jet just for me.
“Look, Elvis—a chartered plane won’t get me back any faster than a commercial flight. There’s no use in spending that kind of money.”
For the first time that day, his warm expression darkened. “All right, I’ll go by myself,” he said. He sounded equal parts defiant rebel and pouting little boy.
I still felt responsible for his safety, and I thought about him carrying his gun onto another plane, maybe one with a pilot who wasn’t so understanding. There was a chance I’d lose the job at Paramount I’d worked so hard to get, but I decided I’d help get Elvis through the next part of his trip.
“Listen, E, if I go with you, you have to let me make a call. People may think you’re hurt, or kidnapped. Your family’s probably worried sick. Let me tell your dad and Priscilla you’re OK. And let me have Sonny or Red come up and meet us in Washington, so I can fly back.”
He agreed I should make the call, and said I should have Sonny come up and meet us. I phoned Graceland right away, and Sonny answered the phone. I explained to him what was going on, then took some time to explain to Vernon where Elvis was and where he was going, and that he should let Priscilla know that Elvis was all right. After that call, I had to snap into action to work out all the details for Elvis’s return trip to D.C.—lining up our airline tickets, making pre-boarding arrangements, booking our hotel rooms, and hiring limos to get us to and from the airports. There was no way to do this without spending some more of Elvis’s money—I charged most of it to his American Express card.
A short while later, with Sir Gerald again at the wheel, we were driving back to LAX. It had occurred to me that we might need some cash during the course of the trip. I didn’t have any (not an unusual situation for me back then) and Elvis didn’t have any, either. All we had was his credit card and a checkbook that I’d found in his desk at Hillcrest. The ever-resourceful Sir Gerald spoke up and said that he knew someone at the Beverly Hilton Hotel who might honor a check for $500 on a Sunday night, so we made the stop there and succeeded in getting the money. Elvis handed it to me for safekeeping.
We got to the airport and were the first to board our red-eye flight. As the rest of the passengers boarded we noticed that there were an unusual number of soldiers on the plane—guys coming home from Vietnam who had first stopped in L.A. and were now heading back east to their homes, just in time for Christmas. Many passengers recognized Elvis, and he was cordial with everyone who said hello. Before the plane took off, one of the soldiers came up the aisle to stand next to Elvis and talk with him. He told Elvis what a big fan he was, and Elvis took an interest in the young guy, asking him where he was coming from and where he was heading. I saw that the two were having a very friendly conversation, and my attention drifted after a while. It was refocused when Elvis put a gentle elbow in my ribs.
“Where’s that money?”
“What money?” I asked. But I’d seen enough of Elvis’s gestures of generosity to suspect what was coming next.
“The $500.”
“That’s all we’ve got, Elvis.”
“You don’t understand—this guy’s just come home from the war. He’s going home to see his family. I want him to have the money.”
The soldier got the $500, and I was suddenly in the strange situation of traveling across the country with Elvis Presley, absolutely penniless.
Once the flight was in the air, Elvis struck up a conversation with the stewardess who was tending to us. From her he learned that there was a government VIP on the plane: U.S. Senator George Murphy of California. Elvis was very interested in meeting the senator, and headed back to introduce himself. I looked back a couple of times to see that the two seemed engaged in a very serious conversation.
When Elvis returned to his seat, I got another elbow.
“Jerry—you think they have some stationery on this plane?”
We called the stewardess over and got ahold of several sheets of airline stationery and a pen. And there in the first-class cabin, Elvis Presley began to write a letter. This might have been the most surprising development of the trip so far—I’d certainly never seen Elvis write a letter before. He worked diligently for quite a while, and when he was finished, he handed me the pages.
“Jerry, I just wrote a letter to President Nixon. Would you proofread it for me?”
Here was a letter from the biggest star in the world to the leader of the free world, being given to me—the guy who flunked first grade—for proofreading. But I was touched by how readily he trusted me with it.
The pages weren’t pretty—Elvis’s penmanship was somewhere between a doctor’s and a grade-schooler’s—but right away I was impressed with the tone of the writing. Elvis was being humble, respectful, and sincere, and was offering his services to the President to work as a kind of ambassador between the rock-and-roll subculture and the government. After describing “The Establishment” that so many young people were finding fault with, Elvis had underlined a thought: “I call it America, and I love it.” I felt a mix of feelings as I read that; I felt protective toward Elvis, and didn’t want him to come across as a right-wing extremist. But I also knew where his heart was, and had always felt that the truest expression of his politics was in a pair of his records, “If I Can Dream” and “In the Ghetto.” And reading the letter I could see that when he talked about loving America, it wasn’t part of a political agenda—it was because he had lived the American dream and wanted desperately to be able to give something back to the land that had made his wonderful life possible. He didn’t consider his years of army duty to have settled the debt. He was going straight to the highest authority in the country to try to find a way to use some of his power in a constructive way.
He did want something in return. “First and foremost, I am an entertainer, but all I need is the Federal credentials.” Elvis was making a sincere offer of services, but if he was going to be of some use to the government, he wanted official recognition. He wanted a badge.
To me, this didn’t seem crazy or unusual. From the earliest period of Elvis’s career, he’d felt a strong kinship with the policemen who protected him during concerts and public appearances, and greatly enjoyed hearing about their lives and their work. And it seemed that no matter how tough the cops were, they always enjoyed their connection to Elvis. At some point, he began asking if he could have credentials from the police departments he worked with, and began accumulating honorary badges. His badge collection became a passionate hobby of his—he’d show them off the way someone else might show off their prized coins or stamps. After the threat in Las Vegas, though, the honorary badges weren’t quite as exciting or useful anymore. He wanted credentials that gave him a real, working connection to the police forces he dealt with, and he wanted to be able to travel with the guns he felt he needed for personal safety. He, along with some of us guys, had received Shelby County deputy sheriff badges back in Memphis, and we had also been officially deputized in Palm Springs after proving ourselves capable on the police shooting range.
I’d been with Elvis a month before when he’d gotten a glimpse of the ultimate prize—a federal badge. Elvis had asked me to come along with him to a dinner at the renowned Beverly Hills restaurant Chasen’s. The dinner had been set up by John O’Grady, a tough, gruff, ex-L.A. narcotics cop. O’Grady had been referred to Elvis by his attorney, Ed “The Hook” Hookstratten, to work for him as a private
detective, helping him get to the bottom of what turned out to be a baseless paternity suit against him. Elvis had no interest in dining in upscale hot spots, but he couldn’t say no to O’Grady’s invitation—the detective promised to introduce him to a fully credentialed federal undercover agent.
That agent turned out to be Paul Frees, an unremarkable-looking guy who was well known as a cartoon voice-over artist. Frees had done undercover narcotics work for the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the precursor to the DEA (given his government work, it’s interesting that one of his best-known voices was that of evil spy “Boris Badenov” from the Bullwinkle show). With some encouragement from O’Grady, Frees showed Elvis his federal badge, and I saw my friend’s eyes light up. He was going to have to figure out a way to get his own BNDD badge.
And this letter was a brilliant way to make that badge a possibility. Elvis cited Senator Murphy in the body of the text and had him listed as a messenger—it would be delivered “via Sen. George Murphy.” A couple other things struck me about the letter. First, though I had long stopped being impressed that Elvis knew my name, I was a little surprised to see that he could spell my surname perfectly—he mentioned to the President that he was traveling with me. I was also amused when I read one of Elvis’s final points—that he’d be glad to help his country “as long as it is kept very Private.” I didn’t see how anything around Elvis could stay private for long, especially a government credential. The letter ended with a request for a personal meeting with the President.
When I finished reading the letter, I felt that these pages couldn’t capture the spirit of Elvis any better. It was a work of warmth, sincerity, innocence, and skillful strategy that conveyed both a successful man’s generosity and a little kid’s desire for a special prize. Frankly, I didn’t think we had a chance of getting into the White House—I’d read that, with the Vietnam war effort in a state of turmoil, even senators were having a hard time meeting with the President. But I wasn’t going to change a word of Elvis’s heartfelt writing.
“Great letter, E. I think you should send it as is.”
By the time we landed in Washington and climbed into a limo, Elvis had changed his mind about delivering the letter—he didn’t want to send it via the senator, he wanted to deliver it in person. I’d been up for two days, and had been looking forward to a shower at the Washington Hotel.
“Elvis, it’s barely daylight. Shouldn’t we check into the hotel first and clean up?”
“Jerry, I want to get this to the White House.”
Of course, we headed to the White House. And I guess it hadn’t really occurred to me how out of place we’d be in official Washington until our car pulled up to the northwest guard gate at the White House and Elvis jumped out to deliver his letter. He’d been wearing clothes that made perfect sense in any Elvis setting—a navy-blue gabardine, karate-style two-piece suit over a high-collared shirt, with a topcoat draped over his shoulders, accessorized with a gold medallion, a thick gold belt, and a gold-handled walking stick. At Graceland or in L.A., this was simply Elvis dressed up. But as he strode purposefully toward the White House security guards, I feared he might be taken for some kind of gabardine invasion force.
The guards certainly didn’t appreciate being startled this way, and went into a high-alert mode—they wanted the car moved and the guy in the topcoat gone. I could see Elvis wasn’t going to come this far to be turned away, and the situation had the possibility of turning ugly, so I ran out to do some diplomatic work. I began to calmly explain that this was Mr. Elvis Presley and that he had simply written a letter to the President that he wished to deliver. The guards took another look at the security threat beside me and all of a sudden understood who was in front of them. Happy to be of service, they took the letter and promised to get it to the President within the hour.
We finally got over to the hotel and cleaned ourselves up, and I assumed Elvis and I would hang out until Sonny got there. It would be my job to keep him from getting too disappointed about the White House not calling. But Elvis had some other angles to work. He wanted his meeting with the President, but he’d also done enough research to know that the deputy director of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs was a guy named John Finlator. Elvis was going to Finlator’s office to make a direct request for the badge.
“Jerry, you stay here and wait for the President’s call,” he told me. “Here’s the number at Finlator’s office. Call right away when you hear something.”
And he left. I’d been reading stuff about some of the people that worked for Howard Hughes—how they’d be left in a hotel room waiting for some urgent, top-secret call that never came. I had visions of growing another beard for Elvis, as I waited in vain for the phone to ring. But about a half hour later, just as I was thinking about keeping my strength up with a room-service order, the phone did ring. It was the White House.
“Mr. Schilling, this is Egil Krogh, of the White House staff. The President has read Mr. Presley’s letter and would like to meet with him in thirty minutes.”
I explained that Mr. Presley wasn’t there at the moment but that I’d get in touch with him and relay the message. I dialed John Finlator’s office number as quickly as I could.
“Hello is—is Mr. Elvis Presley there?”
“Who is this?”
I explained my connection, and in a moment Elvis was on the line. He sounded down.
“I’m not doing any good here, Jerry. Can’t get the badge. What’s going on?”
I told him that the President wanted to see him in twenty-five minutes and counting. Knowing how badly he wanted this meeting and the badge, the easiest thing would have been for him to make a beeline to the White House by himself. But he wanted me to come with him.
“Jerry, you stand out in front of the hotel—we’ll swing by and you jump in.”
I got down in front of the place just in time to see Sonny get out of his cab from the airport and grab his bags.
“Sonny,” I shouted, “Leave your bags with the bellman. We’re going to the White House.”
With perfect movie timing, Elvis’s limo pulled up right then, and Sonny and I jumped in.
This time, the gate guards were prepared for us, and we made a smooth entrance to the White House grounds. We were met by Egil “Bud” Krogh, a friendly, professional-looking guy who had an aura of can-do competence about him. He had us sit in his office for a moment so that he could put us through an official pre-Presidential meeting interrogation, making clear exactly what our purpose was in requesting the meeting with the President. Elvis got comfortable on the couch in Krogh’s office and went over some of the same points he’d made in his letter. Krogh had read the letter, and he and Elvis discussed some of the ways he might help the administration deliver an anti-drug message to kids and teenagers.
The meeting didn’t last too long, and ended with Krogh telling us that White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman had approved the meeting of Mr. Presley and President Nixon. There was just one complication—because of Secret Service precautions, only Elvis would meet the President—Sonny and I would have to wait for him in Krogh’s office. Krogh and a very contented-looking Elvis got up to head to the meeting. And I couldn’t believe that what had started out as a crazy idea on some American Airlines stationery was now going to end in the Oval Office. Sonny and I hung out with a young White House staffer, who I seem to remember had just started dating Nixon’s younger daughter. We talked about some of the complications of a romance like that, and we talked a little bit about our experiences working with Elvis. After a while, the phone in the office rang, and the staffer went to answer it. He came back with a very surprised look on his face.
“Uh—the President wants to meet Mr. Presley’s friends.”
Elvis had gotten his meeting, and the leader of the free world was, understandably, on a rigidly controlled time schedule. But Elvis was thoughtful enough to ask if Sonny and I could come join him. And he and the President had gotten al
ong well enough that the President said yes.
We were led down the hall to the Oval Office, and I remember thinking: I’m the guy who wanted to be a history teacher, and now I’m about to step into a room where history is written almost every day. I’m about to step through a door into the office of the most powerful man in the world. But when we got to that door, it was opened by maybe the second most powerful man in the world: Elvis.
“Come on in, guys,” he said. “Meet the President.” I don’t think he’d ever been in a better mood.
I stepped in and froze for a moment. My first thought, admittedly not a profound one, was, “Wow, the Oval Office is really an oval.” Elvis may have thought I was scared to come further in, so he pushed me a little, and started laughing.
“It’s OK, Jerry. You don’t have to be afraid.”
President Nixon was by his desk at the far end of the oval, signing something, and he moved to welcome us as we stepped forward. After we shook hands, the President gave me a light punch in the arm. “You’ve got a couple of big ones here, Elvis,” he said. “You boys play football?”
I hadn’t been a fan of Nixon’s, and in person he seemed as uncomfortable as he looked in photos and on television. But there was something open and—surprisingly—honest about him, too. He really had been moved by Elvis’s letter, and seemed genuinely pleased to have us all there for a visit. We were probably the most unusually dressed visitors he’d had in some time—along with Elvis in his gabardine, Sonny was wearing a dark suit fit for a Hollywood nightclub, and I was in a leather jacket. But that didn’t seem to faze the President a bit. So, we talked some football with him, handicapping the college season. There was a White House photographer in the room, and we all had our pictures taken with the President. As the photos were snapped, I couldn’t stop thinking about just how far Elvis had taken me in all our years and all our travels: from Guthrie Park to the White House.
Me and a Guy Named Elvis Page 27