Lisa Marie Presley: Remembering the Gen X Kid Who Lost Her Dad

I by no means met Lisa Marie Presley. But we have been children collectively. At least, it feels that method.

I’ve by no means heard a single track of hers, and I did not sustain on her celeb comings and goings. But nonetheless, I’m unhappy concerning the dying of a 54-year-old lady I by no means knew.

Maybe it is a Gen X or Seventies child factor. When I used to be little, she was one of many few children within the public eye who wasn’t a baby actor. Adult celebrities got here and went, however right here was Lisa Marie, one other lady about my age, with a public face and title. Like me, she did not have a starring half in motion pictures or TV exhibits. Instead, there’d be the occasional photograph of her dolled up in a Christmas costume or one thing, posing along with her well-known sideburned dad, who cherished her a lot he named his airplane after her.

Dads and daughters

Solidarity, sister — I additionally had a sideburned dad. It was the Seventies; most each child had a sideburned dad. Our sideburned dads weren’t world-famous singers identifiable solely by their first title, and did not have planes they named after us. But they positively posed for awkward household images wanting uncomfortably sweaty and with large lapels on their jackets, similar to Elvis. 

Even her title marked her as considered one of us. The yr I used to be born, “Lisa” was the most well-liked baby-girl title in America, and “Marie” definitely appeared like one of the standard center names. I’ve near a dozen buddies named “Lisa” to this present day. Gen X nursing properties can have a whole Lisa wing if they need sometime, catering solely to aged Lisas. Maybe just a few Kims and Amys.

The Seventies have been this nation’s awkward age, and it was type of an unpleasant time to be a child. Events — the Vietnam War, Watergate — have been grim. The sights we surrounded ourselves with weren’t significantly better: orange shag carpet, avocado home equipment, bell-bottoms. 

Do you already know the place your kids are? Nope!

Seventies children weren’t catered to the way in which they’re now. The memes are proper: Your dad and mom kicked you out of the home on a summer season morning and did not anticipate to see you once more till dinner. 

If Mom wanted you in between that point, good luck. You may be taking part in kickball, or smoking in someone’s clubhouse, or rambling alongside the railroad tracks selecting burrs out of your Toughskins, or knee-deep in a pond poking at a useless fish, or risking tetanus taking part in seize the flag in a junkyard. You may be having a blast, you may be being bullied, you may be bored out of your cranium. Your dad and mom by no means knew, and so they weren’t going to ask.

There was no social media in fact, no “influencers.” Very few children my age have been well-known. Lisa Marie was considered one of them. 

Losing her dad

Lisa Marie had type of dropped from the highlight by the point her father, Elvis, died in 1977. Of course, it was enormous, world-shaking information. Giant headlines and information studies have been in every single place. Elvis was deservedly mourned as a legendary singer.

But one thing in me remembered that little lady within the images, and knew that whereas the world might have misplaced an entertainer, there was a child my age who misplaced her dad. 

She was 9. I used to be 9. My dad was no Elvis, and he did not have a airplane to call after me. We did not have Elvis cash, or first-class air journey or fancy properties.   

But Lisa Marie and I have been each 9, and I bought to show 10, and 11, and 16, and 25, and 40, and my dad was nonetheless round, providing recommendation and cracking dangerous dad jokes and displaying up at my college capabilities. Clapping for me at performs, instructing me to drive, strolling me down the aisle, cooing at my child daughter. Lisa Marie did not get that. Hundreds of tens of millions of {dollars} could not purchase that.

That Graceland swing set

Lisa Marie wove out and in of headlines once I bought older. Her life appeared extra unreal and sophisticated than these easy dad-and-daughter images of the Seventies. She turned a mother once I was nonetheless ending up faculty and attempting to determine a path. She married Michael Jackson, and later, Nicolas Cage. She’d come a great distance from her girlhood days. We clearly had little or no in widespread moreover our beginning years.

But once I visited Graceland in 2017, I felt a kinship with Lisa Marie once more. Graceland is a giant home, nevertheless it’s not a Kardashian-style mansion. It felt immediately acquainted — a goofy, considerably awkwardly embellished home of the Seventies, with shag carpet and ponderous tube TVs and a recreation room with a material ceiling and a rip within the pool-table canvas the place some household good friend tried a trick and tousled. 

The steel crimson, white and blue Seventies-style swing set out again seemed loads like one million swing units I’d performed on. We lived by the bicentennial collectively, Lisa Marie and me, and all the pieces was painted crimson, white and blue.

Lisa Marie led an advanced life. The luxuries she knew and the challenges she skilled, good and dangerous, are ones I’ll by no means perceive. But her early, harmless fame burned so huge and so shiny that I by no means forgot her. In the tip, she was a mother and daughter, a singer and songwriter, a businesswoman — she was many issues. 

But my Gen X coronary heart will mourn her because the little child with the sideburned dad, who misplaced him method too quickly.