Elvis Presley’s father, Vernon, worried that many people in his son’s life were taking advantage of him, including his fiancée, Ginger Alden. According to Graceland maid and cook Nancy Rooks, Vernon had never been fond of Alden. On the day Elvis died, Vernon told her she was no longer welcome at Graceland.
Vernon Presley clashed with Ginger Alden on the day Elvis died
In Aug. 1977, Alden woke up and realized Elvis was not in bed beside her. Though she wasn’t immediately concerned, she investigated and found Elvis unresponsive on the bathroom floor.
After paramedics rushed Elvis to the hospital, a devastated Vernon waited for news at Graceland. Alden was also waiting at the house, which Vernon evidently did not like.
“Later that day, as I was standing, again, at the bottom of the stairs, Vernon was walking by as Ginger was coming down the stairs. I heard Vernon tell Ginger, ‘You’ll have to leave now. You’re not welcome in this house anymore,’” Rooks wrote in her book Inside Graceland: Elvis’ Maid Remembers. “Now, crying even more, Ginger ran back upstairs, collected her things, and rushed past me and Vernon, left through the back door, and drove off. I watched as she drove out the back, through the side entrance.”
According to Rooks, Vernon hadn’t lashed out at Alden out of nowhere. He had long been suspicious of her intentions with Elvis.
“Vernon and Ginger were not on the best of terms,” she wrote. “I think Vernon saw her as someone who didn’t have Elvis’ best interests in mind. Some of the other employees had that same attitude.”
Nancy Rooks felt sympathy for Ginger Alden
Though Vernon and other Graceland employees disliked Alden, Rooks could sympathize with her. She recognized that there was nothing Alden could have done to prevent Elvis’ death.
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“Ginger and I had lunch several months after Elvis died, and I came away with a more sympathetic view of her,” she wrote. “I think she has been unjustly accused in some ways and somewhat misunderstood in the events of that day. There was probably nothing that she could have done to prevent his death, any more than the rest of us could not have done anything to have saved him.”
She recognized Alden as a young woman in a relationship with a powerful and domineering man.
“Elvis was a strong personality, and was used to having his way,” she wrote. “Ginger was very young at the time. I sometimes have thought she may have been in way over her head in her relationship with him at such a young age.”
Nancy Rooks questioned whether Elvis Presley actually intended to marry Ginger Alden
Rooks recognized the differences between Elvis and Alden and believed that they eventually would have led to the collapse of their engagement.
“A lot of people have asked me if Elvis had really intended to marry Ginger. I don’t think that he did,” Rooks wrote. “I think in the beginning he felt like he could change her into someone who could take care of him, but, as time went on, I think he realized that he could not ‘mold her’ like he wanted to. She was just too young and too independent. He had already mentioned to me a day or so earlier that if she did not go with him on this tour, he was going to find someone else.”
Priscilla Presley felt similarly, but Alden defended her relationship with Elvis. She said that just hours before Elvis’ death, they had set a wedding date.
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