Nancy Rooks walked into Graceland on May 9, 1967, as a temporary fill-in. She didn’t stay temporary for long.
She went full time and spent about 10 years there as Elvis Presley’s housekeeper and cook. Fans of this page may remember Nancy from her other Graceland memories, but this one is about something smaller and a lot more personal.
Her days were full, and a lot of her work was looking after the man himself, right down to what he’d wear.
“I would put his clothes out for him. I would put his socks out for him,” she told writer Gary James in an interview for Classic Bands.
On pool days she’d bring Elvis a towel and a radio, plus some cotton to put over his eyes while he soaked up the sun. It was the kind of quiet, careful work that keeps a big house running.
You’d think the woman who kept the King’s house in order would be the one teaching him how things were done. In a lot of ways she was.
But Nancy said the lesson went the other way.
Every time Elvis asked her for something, he said “please.” And when she’d done it, he thanked her. Every single time.
“When he asked you for something, he always would say ‘Thank-you’,” Nancy remembered.
Then she put it in her own words: “he learned me how to say thank-you.”
That’s how Nancy talked. “Learned me” is her way of saying “taught me,” and it’s a lovely way to put it. Here was a grown woman running the most famous house in Memphis, and the man she worked for showed her, day after day, how much two small words could mean.
Where did Elvis get it? Most likely from home. Back in 1956, his mother, Gladys Presley, told the New York Daily Mirror about the boy she raised. “I never heard him call anyone anything except ‘Mister’ and ‘Sir,'” she said.
Years and a whole lot of fame later, he was still saying please and thank you to the woman who cooked for him.
Nancy also talked about the food she made for him, and in this short clip you can hear her tell it in her own voice.
Nancy Rooks remembers cooking for Elvis
Because Elvis woke up in the evening, the staff always kept a pie in the refrigerator upstairs for him. It might be chocolate ice box, lemon ice box or coconut.
“We’d have one of ’em in the refrigerator up there, he could snack on if he wanted to,” Nancy said.
Then there was the bacon. Elvis liked it a very particular way, and Nancy made sure he got it.
“Then I would fry as hard and as dry a whole pound of bacon, OK?” she said. “And I had to make sure it didn’t have any grease. It had to be dry.”
A whole pound, done just the way he liked it, and you can bet a “Thank-you” came right after.
Nancy later wrote a book about her years at the mansion, “Inside Graceland: Elvis’ Maid Remembers.” She passed away on Aug 15, 2022, at 84. Of all the things she could have said about working for the King, she chose to remember his manners and the lesson he passed along to her.