Gris & That: Maybe Elvis really isn’t dead

As with many of the historic events in my lifetime – the Kennedy assassination, the Apollo 11 moon landing and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks – I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard that Elvis Presley died. 

Elvis was 42 years old when he passed away at his Graceland mansion in Memphis on August 16, 1977. He has now been dead longer than he was alive. 

He would be 90 next year. Let that sink in. (And we thought he looked like an old man at 42.)  

I’ve been telling folks for years Elvis is not dead because we will not let him rest in peace. We have our ways of keeping him on life support.

He still hangs out by the side of the road at Minton Lawn & Garden Center. For years, Reeves Minton and his father, Mack Minton, have made sure their 6-foot, 79-pound polyresin statue of Elvis makes its way to the curb and strikes a pose under the watchful wingspan of a giant rooster. 

Yes, Elvis is an icon along Pio Nono Avenue south of I-75. Rubber-necking motorists sometimes honk their horns as they ride by the mutton-chopped mannequin. He wears a white jacket, with the collar turned up, and dark pants  but, alas, no blue suede shoes.

He also has a pulse at Ingleside Village Pizza, where owner Tina Dickson shares a birthday with Elvis (January 8) and maintains an ongoing shrine to the King in the dining room.

You can hardly move around IVP without bumping into something with long sideburns. He hangs from the walls and stands guard near the restrooms. 

Elvis is still a house guest at  Elaine Greene’s home out on Gray Highway. She is a retired English teacher from Macon’s Tattnall Square Academy, where her classroom was once a shrine to All Things Elvis. 

She would include him as a teaching tool on the syllabus. She decorated her room with Elvis cut-outs, album covers, ornaments and jigsaw puzzles.

When she retired 15 years ago, she packed him up and took him home with her. She filled a spare room with books, posters, soda bottles, postcards, stamps, pins,
blankets, pillows and coffee mugs.

 Sweet Elaine is a regular visitor to Graceland, and she always sends me a postcard.

I have a friend and former colleague, Paulette Fountain Brantley, who lives out in Twiggs County. One of her prize possessions is a fork that once touched Elvis’s lips after he ordered room service from his penthouse suite at the old downtown Hilton Hotel.

This was in June 1977, when Elvis was in Macon for a concert. It was two months before he died.

 I won’t go into detail about how Paulette got the stainless steel eating utensil. 

Let’s just say it was a covert operation. Long live the fork.

When I met Joni Mabe 20 years ago this summer, she was doing her part to keep Elvis gyrating at her Everything Elvis Museum in Cornelia.

 She called herself “Jonie Mabe, the Elvis Babe” and claimed to have possession of Elvis’ big toenail, a vial of his sweat and the mole that was removed from his right wrist when he joined the Army in 1958.

Between Paulette and Joni Mabe, that’s a lot of DNA. No wonder Elvis is still alive.

DYNAMIC DUO: With the return of radio personality Vance Shepherd, Middle Georgia listeners are back to waking up to “Laura & Vance in the Morning” on WDEN-FM 99. 

Vance and co-host Laura Starling were together on the air for 10 years until 2019, when Vance left for a radio job in Montana. Laura hosted the show with James Bierley until he moved back to Myrtle Beach, S.C. 

The station contacted Vance about the opening after he had moved to Greenville, S.C., with his wife, Claudia. 

Laura built a strong rapport with Vance, as she did with long-time co-host Gerry Marshall in the 1990s. 

She belongs in a hall of fame somewhere. Next month will mark her 42nd year in radio.

READING LIST: Tony Barnhart, a longtime friend in the newspaper business, will sign books and be the featured speaker at Historic Macon’s Sidney’s Salon, on Thursday, Aug. 22 from 5:30-6:30 p.m. at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.

Tony is best known as “Mr. College Football” from his days as an analyst with ESPN, CBS and the SEC Network. But the subject of his sixth book is high school football. 

It’s about Greene County’s first integrated football team in 1970.

He not only wrote “The 19 of Greene: Football, Friendship and Change in the Fall of 1970’’ … he lived it. As a player, Tony wore No. 50 and played guard, tackle, tight end and defensive back for the Tigers. 

At 5-foot-10, 165 pounds, he didn’t exactly strike fear in his opponents.

But he could tell a story. One of his high school English teachers, Tommi Ward, recognized his gift for words and encouraged him to become a writer. He was a sports writer for 35 years, mostly at The Atlanta Constitution, before he got into broadcast journalism.

Like many school systems in the South, racial integration was a gradual process in Greene County. The transition took several years. There were many measured steps to merge the county’s three high schools – Greensboro, Union Point and Corry. 

Tony recalled somebody telling him “you’re not integrated until the football team is integrated.’’  

The Tigers began spring practice that year with three times more players than they finished. 

Although there were only 19 players left on the roster – 12 white and 7 Black players — the team won seven games that season and made the playoffs

Tony was inspired to start working on the book after coming across an old, black-and-white team photograph. Of the 19 players, 15 were still living. Tony wrote chapters on each of them, and also interviewed coaches, teachers and administrators. 

Tony was inducted in the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in Macon in 2021 for his contributions to sports. 

There is no admission fee for the Sidney Salon, but you need to register (historicmacon.org). I hope to see you there.

CHI CHI: Professional golfer Chi Chi Rodriquez, who died last week, was quite the character.

I once interviewed him at a charity golf tournament at Houston Lake Country Club in Perry.

We talked about golf … and giving back. I will never forget him quoting television actor Danny Thomas: “Takers eat well. Givers sleep well.”