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

I by no means met Lisa Marie Presley. However we had been children collectively. At the very least, it feels that means.

I’ve by no means heard a single track of hers, and I did not sustain on her movie star comings and goings. However nonetheless, I am unhappy in regards to the demise of a 54-year-old lady I by no means knew.

Perhaps it is a Gen X or Seventies child factor. After I was little, she was one of many few children within the public eye who wasn’t a baby actor. Grownup celebrities got here and went, however right here was Lisa Marie, one other lady about my age, with a public face and identify. Like me, she did not have a starring half in films or TV exhibits. As a substitute, there’d be the occasional picture of her dolled up in a Christmas costume or one thing, posing together with her well-known sideburned dad, who beloved 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 identify, and did not have planes they named after us. However they undoubtedly posed for awkward household images trying uncomfortably sweaty and with big lapels on their jackets, identical to Elvis. 

Even her identify marked her as one among us. The yr I used to be born, “Lisa” was the most well-liked baby-girl identify in America, and “Marie” definitely appeared like probably the most widespread center names. I’ve near a dozen mates named “Lisa” to at the present time. Gen X nursing properties can have a complete Lisa wing if they need sometime, catering solely to aged Lisas. Perhaps just a few Kims and Amys.

The Seventies had been this nation’s awkward age, and it was sort of an unsightly time to be a child. Occasions — the Vietnam Struggle, Watergate — had been grim. The sights we surrounded ourselves with weren’t a lot better: orange shag carpet, avocado home equipment, bell-bottoms. 

Are you aware the place your youngsters are? Nope!

Seventies children weren’t catered to the best way 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 count on to see you once more till dinner. 

If Mother wanted you in between that point, good luck. You is perhaps taking part in kickball, or smoking in any person’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 is perhaps having a blast, you is perhaps being bullied, you is perhaps bored out of your cranium. Your dad and mom by no means knew, they usually weren’t going to ask.

There was no social media in fact, no “influencers.” Only a few children my age had been well-known. Lisa Marie was one among them. 

Shedding her dad

Lisa Marie had sort of dropped from the highlight by the point her father, Elvis, died in 1977. After all, it was big, world-shaking information. Big headlines and information stories had been all over the place. Elvis was deservedly mourned as a legendary singer.

However one thing in me remembered that little lady within the images, and knew that whereas the world could 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 aircraft to call after me. We did not have Elvis cash, or first-class air journey or fancy properties.   

However Lisa Marie and I had been each 9, and I acquired 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 exhibiting 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. A whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} could not purchase that.

That Graceland swing set

Lisa Marie wove out and in of headlines once I acquired older. Her life appeared extra unreal and sophisticated than these easy dad-and-daughter images of the Seventies. She grew to become a mother once I was nonetheless ending up faculty and making an attempt 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 frequent in addition to our beginning years.

However once I visited Graceland in 2017, I felt a kinship with Lisa Marie once more. Graceland is an enormous home, but it surely’s not a Kardashian-style mansion. It felt immediately acquainted — a goofy, considerably awkwardly adorned home of the Seventies, with shag carpet and ponderous tube TVs and a sport 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 purple, white and blue Seventies-style swing set out again seemed loads like one million swing units I would performed on. We lived by way of the bicentennial collectively, Lisa Marie and me, and every thing was painted purple, white and blue.

Lisa Marie led an advanced life. The luxuries she knew and the challenges she skilled, good and dangerous, are ones I am going to by no means perceive. However her early, harmless fame burned so massive and so vibrant that I by no means forgot her. In the long run, she was a mother and daughter, a singer and songwriter, a businesswoman — she was many issues. 

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