Elvis My Best Man
- By George Klein
- Paperback
-
When George Klein was an eighth grader at Humes High, he couldn't have known how important the new kid with the guitar, "the boy named Elvis," would later become in his life. But from the first time GK (as he was nicknamed by Elvis) heard this kid sing, he knew that Elvis Presley was someone extraordinary. During Elvis's rise to fame and throughout the wild swirl of his remarkable life, Klein was a steady presence and one of Elvis's closest and most loyal friends until his untimely death in 1977.
-
On December 21, 1970, Elvis Presley arrived at the White House to meet President Nixon. Elvis was determined to receive from the President a federal narcotics badge. On his flight from Los Angeles to Washington, Elvis wrote a letter to the President in which Elvis stated, "The drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc. do not consider me as their enemy or as they call it the establishment. I call it America and I love it. Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help the country out. I have no concern or motives other than helping the country out. So I wish not to be given a title or an appointed position. I can and will do more good if I were made a Federal Agent at Large and I will help out by doing it my way through my communications with people of all ages." During the meeting, President Nixon made it possible for Elvis to receive his very own Narcotics Bureau badge.
Elvis' letter and the famous photographs of the meeting, photographed by White House photographer Ollie Atkins, are in the holdings of the National Archives at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.