When Elvis died, people in Southern California were all shook up

Forty-five years ago, on Aug. 16, 1977, Elvis Presley left the building for good.

News of the singer’s death at age 42 was so unexpected and upsetting that, as with President Kennedy’s assassination, people tend to remember where they were or what they were doing when they heard.

Then 13, I was with my family in a department store in Champaign, Illinois. A store employee got on the public address system to awkwardly announce that Elvis had died.

That the store interrupted everyone’s shopping to share breaking news tells you what a bombshell this was.

When I asked at the end of Sunday’s column for your own memories of Elvis’ passing, responses poured in from all over the region. I did not mark any of them “Return to Sender.”

“I was watching ‘General Hospital’ on television,” says Rosemary Greene, 77, of Reseda. “They interrupted the program to announce Elvis had died. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and thought it must be a mistake!”

It was no mistake. Presley was pronounced dead at a Memphis hospital at 3:30 p.m. That was 1:30 p.m. in California.

Then-UCLA student Doug Thomson was seeing an early matinee of “The Spy Who Loved Me,” the new James Bond film, in the Westwood Village. That meant he was in the dark in more ways than one as the news spread.

Walking to a bus stop after the movie, Thomson reeled when he saw a newspaper rack with a rush edition headlined “Elvis Dead.”

Marc Russell was visiting his parents when they turned on their TV to watch the news. “The first thing we saw was a clip of Elvis singing. Did this mean he had died? Yes, it did,” recalls Russell, 70, of Los Angeles.

“The thing that immediately came to mind,” Russell shares, “was that when I saw him on TV for the first time, when I was no older than 4 or 5, I was so energized by his performance that I did a halfway backflip.” Russell adds: “I have no memory of this, but Mom and Dad told me about it later.”

Many people got the news from radio. Like Tom Munoz of Ontario, who was 15 and on his way down Euclid Avenue to the swap meet. He was, he says, “devastated.”

Gary Rea and his wife, commuting home together to Fountain Valley, were stuck in traffic due to a big rig accident that had closed the 405.

“The result was a three- to four-hour commute,” says Rea, 77, now of Rancho Cucamonga, “during which we listened to talk radio that was 100% devoted to the announcement of Elvis’ death and related life stories. We were stunned and sad for the entire trip.”

“I vividly remember preparing to turn off Highway 1 to return home from work,” Sue Poso, 68, of Alta Loma says, “and hearing ‘The King is dead’ on the radio. I thought, ‘what king?,’ as there were a few in the news at that time.”

Dave Kyle’s story is more along the lines of “which Elvis?”

Kyle was a musician with a club gig until 3 a.m. He came home in the wee hours of Aug. 16, 1977 to find that his and his girlfriend’s newly adopted kitten was dead in the middle of the street. The kitten’s name: Elvis.

Kyle moved the body to the row of trees as a temporary measure, “so as to not alarm neighbors by digging a hole in the yard at 3:30 a.m.,” explains Kyle, now 72, of Riverside.

He went to bed and was still asleep in early afternoon when a friend rushed into his room, saying, “Elvis is dead!”

Kyle replied sadly, “Yeah, I know, I saw him when I came in last night. Do you want to help me bury him?”

I would pay money to see the perplexed look on his friend’s face.

Hank Stoy was working in the L.A. city administrative office. “One of my colleagues got a call from his wife with the bad news,” says Stoy, 80, of Rancho Cucamonga. With the staff in cubicles rather than closed offices, “word spread very quickly. Not much work got done the rest of the day.”

Russell Cinque Jr., 68, of Glendale was listening to KRTH-FM when disc jockey Brother John announced Elvis’ death. For an oldies station and its listeners, it had to be sobering all around to process the early death of the progenitor of much of its music.

Old fans took it hard. Mary Jimenez Gonzalez of Rialto, 79, had seen Presley’s film “Love Me Tender” multiple times at age 13 and later saw him in concert in San Bernardino. When she heard he’d died, she cried.

“It was unbelievable that this could happen to him,” she says. “After all, he was the King.”

There, there.

Tina Gilbertson was the bearer of the bad news. Then 16, she heard it on the radio and went to tell her mom, who was in the garage doing laundry. “Her face dropped,” Gilbertson says.

That night there was a big dinner for her father’s 40th birthday. In another sign of the era, “little was said about Elvis and his death,” admits Gilbertson, now of Yucaipa, “but there was plenty of talk about the ‘Star Wars’ movie.”

Not about “The Spy Who Loved Me”?

Marcy Colley of Claremont happened to be at a perfect business for reaction to Elvis’ demise: a beauty parlor. Colley was working there for the summer at age 13. She sets the scene for us.

“I remember the bank of hairdryers full of women in curlers, cigarettes lit and magazines in hand. This was an everyday scene,” relates Colley. Until suddenly it wasn’t.

“A woman arrived for her appointment in tears. Everyone stopped what they were doing. The ladies under the hairdryers lifted the hood,” Colley says, “so they could hear the woman say Elvis had died.

“Everyone burst into tears at the same time. It was like a scene from a movie.”

What did the teenager do? What she could.

“I grabbed a box of tissues and made my way around, passing them out to some very distraught women,” Colley says. “That was a memorable day at work to say the least.”

To everyone who shared their memories with me: Thankyouverramuch.

brIEfly

On the Apple TV+ series “Loot,” Maya Rudolph plays billionaire Molly Novak, who is gamely trying to become a philanthropist. In the latest episode, she’s having lunch with a date who asks about her family. Her answer: They live in San Bernardino. Many people do, of course, but you rarely hear about it on TV.

David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, as you often hear about. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.

Source: Orange County Register