Elvis’ mother’s name before she married Vernon Presley was Gladys Love Smith.
Given the mother-son relationship, the middle name seems suitable.
Gladys Love Smith Presley was born on April 25, 1912, in Pontotoc County, Mississippi, approximately 15 miles from Tupelo.
Elvis Presley’s father, Vernon Elvis Presley, was four years younger. He was born on April 10, 1916, in Fulton, Mississippi.
Elvis Presley, accompanied by his parents Gladys and Vernon, reported for Army duty to the Draft Board office in the M & M Building at 198 S. Main around 6:30 a.m. on March 24, 1958. After processing and a physical at Kennedy Veterans Hospital, he and the other inductees will board a bus bound for Fort Chaffee, Ark., later that afternoon. Elvis arrived at Fort Hood, Texas, on March 28, where he would spend six months training before being shipped to Germany. His mother would die before he could finish training.
Gladys and Vernon met at church and eloped when she was 21 and he was 17 – too young to marry officially in the state. Vernon claimed to be 22 on the marriage license, but Gladys shaved off a few years and informed the Pontotoc County court clerk she was 19.
The wedding occurred on June 17, 1933. Elvis Aaron Presley—”Aron,” on the birth certificate, which Vernon later stated was a misspelling—was born Jan. 8, 1935; Elvis’ twin, Jesse Garon Presley, delivered 35 minutes earlier, was stillborn.
Gladys and her lone kid were extremely close (the Graceland website calls her “a sweet mama bear”). However, circumstances were difficult (“The young family lived in poverty,” wrote People magazine following Elvis’ death). Elvis’ parents did a variety of jobs: Vernon was a truck driver and hog farmer at times, and Gladys worked in a garment factory. Vernon was sent to the “Parchman Farm” penitentiary in 1938 for changing the amount of a check, and the family lost their Tupelo house as a result. He served eight months.
In November 1938, the Presleys relocated to Memphis, where both parents worked various professions. From September 1949 until January 1953, they lived in an apartment at the Lauderdale Courts, the family’s longest stay at a single address until the 1957 transfer to Graceland, the estate Elvis purchased with $102,500 of the money he gained from his unanticipated rock ‘n’ roll fame.
Graceland archivist Angie Marchese holds the first known photograph of Elvis Presley, taken in 1937 when he was two years old with his parents Vernon and Gladys. Tuesday, August 10, 2021.
Vernon and Gladys lived at Graceland with Elvis and a few other relatives. Gladys — whom Elvis referred to as “my best girl” — died on August 14, 1958, at Methodist Hospital, while recovering from a heart attack she sustained while Elvis was attending basic training at Fort Hood, Texas, after being conscripted into the US Army. She was only 46, yet she lived four years longer than her son. Elvis was 42 when he died on August 16, 1977.
Elvis was granted “emergency leave” from the Army to visit his mother in the hospital and attend her funeral. Charles Portis, the eventual author of the novel “True Grit,” chronicled one of Elvis’ visits at Methodist while working as a reporter for The Commercial Appeal. “There were tears in his eyes as he spoke of his mother in a subdued manner,” Portis said. The singer “reflected moodily on the family’s pre-Cadillac days.” Presley gave Portis this quote: “I prefer to do anything I can for my family. We didn’t have anything before, just a hard road to travel.”
Elvis was devastated during his mother’s funeral on August 15. “Good-bye, Darling. Goodbye! — I love you so much!” Elvis exclaimed, according to the Memphis Press-Scimitar. “I lived my whole life just for you.” The publication also said that Vernon Presley was in tears.
Lipstick kisses adorn the walls of Elvis Presley’s bedroom at Lauderdale Courts Apartment Complex. Elvis, Gladys, and Vernon Presley stayed at the apartment from September 1949 to January 1953.
Vernon served as a business manager at Graceland, operating from an office behind the house that is now part of the tour. He traveled with Elvis to movie locations and was occasionally seen welcoming admirers at Graceland’s gates. Vernon signed several of the Graceland-related checks and transactions in the Elvis Presley archive.
Vernon Presley married Davada “Dee” Stanley, a Tennessee woman who met Vernon in Friedberg, Germany, while her husband was stationed alongside Elvis. Elvis didn’t approve of the marriage. Dee and Vernon split in 1974 and were legally divorced in 1977, a few months after Elvis died. Dee died in Nashville in 2013, at the age of 88.
Vernon Presley remained at Graceland after his son’s death, assisting in the management of the estate and Presley business matters. Vernon relocated Elvis and Gladys’ corpses from Forest Hill Cemetery to Graceland’s “Meditation Garden” in October 1977, following three “confused and unsuccessful” attempts to kidnap Elvis’ corpse from the Forest Hill mausoleum. However, Gladys’ marble tombstone, which Elvis designed, was not put at her burial until 2018. The stone, which describes Gladys Presley as the “Sunshine of Our Home,” had been stored at Graceland since the bodies were taken from Forest Hill.
On June 26, 1979, Vernon Presley died at Baptist Hospital, where his son had already been pronounced dead. He was 64. He had been hospitalized for over a month following a heart attack. He was interred at Graceland, where he is now one of six Presley family members. Graceland opened to the public three years later, in 1982.
