I by no means met Lisa Marie Presley. However we have been children collectively. No less than, it feels that method.

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 girl I by no means knew.

Possibly it is a Gen X or Nineteen Seventies child factor. After I was little, she was one of many few children within the public eye who wasn’t a toddler actor. Grownup celebrities got here and went, however right here was Lisa Marie, one other woman about my age, with a public face and identify. Like me, she did not have a starring half in films or TV exhibits. As an alternative, there’d be the occasional picture of her dolled up in a Christmas gown or one thing, posing along 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 Nineteen 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 positively posed for awkward household images trying uncomfortably sweaty and with large lapels on their jackets, identical to Elvis. 

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

The Nineteen Seventies have been this nation’s awkward age, and it was type of an unsightly time to be a child. Occasions — the Vietnam Struggle, Watergate — have 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 kids 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 time morning and did not count on to see you once more till dinner. 

If Mother wanted you in between that point, good luck. You could be taking part in kickball, or smoking in anyone’s clubhouse, or rambling alongside the railroad tracks choosing 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 could be having a blast, you could be being bullied, you could 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.” Only a few children my age have been well-known. Lisa Marie was certainly one of them. 

Shedding her dad

Lisa Marie had type 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 experiences have been all over the place. Elvis was deservedly mourned as a legendary singer.

However one thing in me remembered that little woman 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 airplane to call after me. We did not have Elvis cash, or first-class air journey or fancy properties.   

However 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 faculty 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 bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} could not purchase that.

That Graceland swing set

Lisa Marie wove out and in of headlines after I bought older. Her life appeared extra unreal and sophisticated than these easy dad-and-daughter images of the Nineteen Seventies. She turned a mother after 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 widespread moreover our beginning years.

However after I visited Graceland in 2017, I felt a kinship with Lisa Marie once more. Graceland is a giant home, but it surely’s not a Kardashian-style mansion. It felt immediately acquainted — a goofy, considerably awkwardly embellished home of the Nineteen Seventies, with shag carpet and hulking 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 crimson, white and blue Nineteen Seventies-style swing set out again seemed quite a bit like one million swing units I would performed on. We lived via the bicentennial collectively, Lisa Marie and me, and every part was painted crimson, white and blue.

Lisa Marie led a sophisticated 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 vivid that I by no means forgot her. Ultimately, 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 method too quickly.