August 16, 1977

One hot August day, I was out working in the Barn Garden. This garden, as you can guess, was right next to the barn, only separated by the place where we kept the car. In the barn we had a radio. I am sure all farmers have radios in their barns, and probably have ever since rural electricity came to Nova Scotia. We had one and we all listened to it when we did our chores. Since we had no television, we got all our news from the radio, and sometimes from the paper – the Truro Daily News, which the kids dubbed, The Truro Daily Blues.

On this hot August day, I must have been weeding, and as I worked I listened to music. Then the news came on, and what a shock it was. Elvis Presley was dead at 42. I couldn’t believe it. He was younger than I was by two years!

Just as I and many others always remembered where we were and what we were doing when John Kennedy was shot, so I had the same experience when I heard about Elvis’ death. I remember that I even shed a few tears. Probably not so much for Elvis as for myself. It was the end of an era, and the end of my youth. I was never much a fan of his. I knew his movies were bad, and he was no actor! But just the same, he was that young man from Memphis, and I remember how much everyone was talking about him when Dave and I moved to Memphis in 1956.

There was a lot of controversy about whether he was a good boy, or whether he was very, very bad, leading the young people down a path of immoral sexual behavior. After all, those gyrations on the Ed Sullivan Show were suggestive and vulgar. And then too, his facial expressions were deliberately put on to be sexy and drive the girls wild. Which of course he did.

I remember one day at my aunt Vera’s house, there were quite a few people there, and they were talking about Elvis. I was just 23 at the time, which meant that he was 21. The general consensus was that he was not bad because he really and truly loved his Mama. And no matter what the truth is or was, I think that they were right. I think he was very young and was beginning to be famous, and he was aware that to keep his popularity he must be a sex symbol. And so he was. And who knows what his personal life was like? Who are we to judge him because he was addicted to drugs? Or because he made vulgar moves and gyrations with his hips? One thing I know for sure; he did love his Mama.

So I was sad at the news of his death, saddened and shocked. It came as a blow because I was so far away from all that was happening in the United States. I was still a part of my country in my heart, and I was still homesick. I had wanted to go back home very badly the year before. This just seemed to break another bond with my homeland and with the family members that I had left alive.

It has been 30 years today that I heard that report of his death, yet I can remember it very well. I can remember the sun beating down on me and the tears running down my face. I had never been an Elvis fan, but I felt our common humanity very strongly right then. I don’t know why. I just remember thinking that he was so young to die, and I guess I felt that my youth and my innocence had died too. And I felt so far from home.

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