'I guess my infatuation with Elvis started in that little (Assembly of God) church up in East Tupelo', Magdalene once said, known as Maggie in school because people, including Elvis, never got around to learning how to spell her name correctly. 'He sang and picked the guitar. I sang and played piano'.
They attended school together at Lawhon. 'He really tried his very best, but he didn't make the best of grades', she remembered. 'He was always very well-mannered in school. He never had to go to the principal's office or stand in the corner. I'm sure his mother and father helped him at times with his homework, but I never did.
He was always bringing his guitar to school and at lunch time he would go sit out under a tree and pick and sing. Not just to me, to anyone who happened to be listening'.
Elois Bedford was probably Elvis' first 'girlfriend' - the relationship ended after perhaps one year when Elvis handed Elois a note as she was about to board the school bus. It said he had gone to another girl.
Her name was Magdalene Morgan. She had had her eyes on the shy youngster for a longer time and she knew - just knew - that one day, sooner or later, they would become 'an item'.
Elvis and Magdalene would take strolls through the woods in the hills behind the house. There, they would talk, dream aloud and once, Elvis even got up the nerve to kiss his girlfriend for the first time! 'We were just like any of the other kids while together', she said. 'We would talk about school, church, singing He always wanted to be a singer Always! Back then, there was nothing but woods behind the house. One day he took a knife and he carved a heart on a tree trunk and in it he put my initials and his initials And then he carved 'Love Forever' underneath the heart'. Elvis was so fond of Magdalene that he used his father's and mother's marriage license and wrote both his name and Magdlene's (though misspelled) name on it: 'now we're married too'.
Read an
Interview with Magdalene Morgan by Bill E. Burk.
Elvis Presley and Magdalene Morgan.