Most people picture Elvis Presley up on a stage in a white jumpsuit, with thousands of fans screaming his name. But at home at Graceland he was also somebody’s grandson. And one of the people he loved most lived right there in the house with him.
Her name was Minnie Mae Presley. She was the mother of Vernon Presley, Elvis’s dad, which made her Elvis’s grandmother on his father’s side. She moved in with Elvis and his parents long before the fame ever arrived, and she stayed close through every home the family had in Memphis, Graceland included. Wherever Elvis went, Grandma came too.
Only Elvis didn’t call her Grandma. He had his own name for her, and it was a funny one.
He called her Dodger.
The name went all the way back to when he was a little boy. As his cousin Lamar Fike told it, young Elvis once threw a ball that came flying right at her face, and she ducked out of the way just in time. He got such a kick out of how she dodged it that the name stuck. Everybody else in the house called her Grandma. To Elvis, from then on, she was Dodger.
That little nickname tells you something about the two of them. There was an easy, teasing warmth there, the kind you only get with family.
Years later one of the people closest to him described what those visits to Dodger’s room actually looked like. Linda Thompson was Elvis’s girlfriend through much of the 1970s and lived at Graceland with him for years, so she saw the private, everyday side of Elvis that the fans never did. In August 2023 she stood up at Graceland during Elvis Week and shared this memory in public for the first time.
What she remembered wasn’t loud or showy. It was small, and it was the same every single time.
“We would go into Dodger’s room and sit on the side of her bed,” Linda said. “And he would hold her hands, talk to her and kiss her on the top of her head.” The biggest star in the world, sitting on the edge of his grandmother’s bed, just holding her hands and talking.
You can hear Linda tell it herself, on the Graceland stage, to a room full of people who loved Elvis.
Linda Thompson, who lived at Graceland with Elvis, remembers him at his grandmother’s bedside
Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’s only daughter, grew up knowing Dodger too. In her own book she remembered her great-grandmother rocking away in her chair at Graceland, just part of the ordinary life of the house. Three generations under one roof, with Elvis in the middle of it.
It’s a sweet thing to picture. The man the whole world called the King, quietly being somebody’s grandson. Linda tells the rest far better than any write-up can, so go listen to her say it.