Royal funeral for king of rock

The car was driven down Elvis Presley Boulevard at about 3:30 a.m. past several people waiting outside the mansion. It doubled back and hit some of them. Two girls were killed and a third seriously injured.

In an effort to keep down the crowds, Elvis Presley's family closed the cemetery to all visitors from mid-morning yesterday. Police, sheriff's deputies, and National Guardsman were on hand to keep back excited fans, many of whom had slept in their cars. Several helicopters flew low over the cemetery.

Flags flew at half-mast yesterday in Tennessee and Mississippi, the state he adopted and the state where he was born, as thousands of tearful Elvis fans gathered outside his mansion and the cemetery while he was buried. An astonishing array of wreaths included a $200 design of a hound dog, sent by an anonymous mourner.

Police estimated that almost 100,000 people made the pilgrimage past his mansion on Wednesday. At the funeral yesterday the crowds were slightly smaller, deterred perhaps by the crush of traffic, the scores of people who fainted from the pushing and the heat, and by the incident at dawn when a teenager drove a careering car into a group of fans and killed two. Police charged Treatise Wheeler, aged 18, with second degree murder and drunken driving. Three girls who were in the car with him were also held.

Memphis was abuzz with gossip about the personalities who had descended on the town. Local newspapers carried stories about world reaction to Elvis Presley's death, including a photograph of the Guardian front page. Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late president, came to see Elvis lying in his open copper coffin on Wednesday. Burt Reynolds, Ann-Margret, John Wayne and Roger Smith attended the private funeral service.

Elvis' last resting place was to be the family vault with space for six. A spokesman for the Forest Hills Cemetery, which is about three miles from Graceland Mansion said there was a possibility that Elvis' mother's coffin might be moved in to the crypt. Her grave at the moment is on the grass outside a few hundred yards away.

The pallbearers at the funeral included Elvis' road manager, Joe Esposito: his personal physician, Dr George Nichopoulof, and his record producer, Felton Jarvis, from Nashville. Rex Humbard, an evangelist from Akron, Ohio, who was a secret visitor to the mansion, conducted the service.

Jonathan Steele
Friday August 19, 1977
Guardian Unlimited

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