Member-only story
The day the world stood still for me
August 1977, Elvis Aaron Presley passed away. There was a shock wave sent through the nation and the world. I was only sixteen at the time when the announcement was made. I said “that’s a nice joke now tell another one.” This happened just as we were gearing up for back to school.
On the day of his funeral my sister and I asked each other which channel? She was asking channels 7, 10 or 13? That’s right cable hadn’t taken over yet and all we had was the three local channels and Elvis was just like the president, on all three channels. My grandmother watched it with us and said “kids, in years to come this will be your Kennedy moment in history.” “People will ask you if you remember what you were doing and where you were at when Elvis died.”
I remember in 1973, then after his death watching a rerun of his world wide concert live from Hawaii. It was a wonderful event, but we had to watch it under parental supervision because they considered Elvis a bad influence on children. Some of the speakers at Elvis’ funeral was Muhammad Ali, Reverend Rex Humbard, whom Elvis thought very highly of and was…