Elvis Presley and Bobby Smith

My brother, Bobby, got run over down in front of Graceland. That was in '61. I guess Bobby was about nineteen or twenty. He was running across the road. He'd been talking to some friends, and he was coming back across, and a kid who wasn't much older than Bobby came out of the side-road and down Highway 51. He'd been drinking and he claimed he didn't see him. He hit Bobby dead-on. The bumper caught him and threw him up over the hood, and then he rolled on across. It crushed both of his legs, and broke his cheekbone, and cut him up a little. He had some internal bleeding, but it was mostly his legs.

Bobby Smith, Elvis Presley, Billy Smith at Graceland 1956.

Somebody took a picture of him on the stretcher. It looks like a slab. My daddy was there, right behind his head. And Elvis was there with a real funny look on his face, sort of a mixture of pity and disgust. My brother looks dead in that picture. It tore him up pretty bad. After that, he tried working a couple of places, but his legs were so brittle he couldn't stand long.

Elvis Presley and Travis Smith tried to keep 19-year-old Bobby Smith's spirits up on the night on March 4, 1961 at Methodist Hospital.

He got married a couple of times. He would have loved a family, loved kids but, somehow or other, it didn't just work. He couldn't hold a job and the women, naturally, resented that. Finally, he got all wrapped up with a girl named Bonnie Allen. She ditched him for someone else and that messed him up even more. He decided that life had just tumed against him.

On September 13, 1968, I got a call. Bobby had taken rat poison. I got him to drink mineral oil, to throw up, and then I said, 'You need to go to the hospital right now'. At first, he refused to go. Finally, we talked him into it. They pumped his stomach and they wanted to keep him overnight, but he wouldn't stay. So he went back home and, sometime during that night, he passed away. He was twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight. It was so sad. Just pitiful. That was a rough time, boy.

Elvis Presley and Travis Smith tried to keep 19-year-old Bobby Smith's spirits up on the night on March 4, 1961 at Methodist Hospital.

Elvis and his cousin, Bobby Smith in the photo booth at Loew's State Theater in Memphis 1951.

Interviews with the Memphis Mafia
Memphis Mafia	George Klein
Marty Lacker	Joe Esposito
Charlie Hodge	Jerry Schilling
Sonny West	Jerry Schilling | Meeting Nixon
Red West | Red West : Writing for the King	Larry Geller
Richard Davis	Sam Thompson
Patty Perry	Lamar Fike
Friends Remember Elvis Presley : Linda Thompson, Joe Esposito, Jerry Schilling and George Klein

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