Elvis Acted Like His Mom Was the Only Member of His Family: ‘She Was His Whole Life’

Elvis Presley and his mom, Gladys Presley, were preternaturally close. Gladys would have done anything for her son, and Elvis did not like to be far from her. According to Elvis’ friend and future bodyguard, Red West, Gladys was more than just a mother to Elvis. When he referred to his family, he spoke only of her.

Elvis Presley ‘worshiped’ his mom

Elvis spent his childhood in his mother’s line of sight. He never spent the night away from his family’s home and Gladys was a constant companion.

“She just never let me out of her sight,” he said, per the book Elvis: What Happened? by Steve Dunleavy. “I used to get annoyed when I was little, but I later realized it was all because she loved me so much.”

Gladys was the most important person in the early years of Elvis’ life. 

“He simply worshiped the ground his mother walked on,” West said. “To him she was a mother, a friend, a big sister all rolled into one. I mean, she was his whole life.”

West said that when Elvis talked about family outings, he spoke about them as if his father hadn’t been there. 

“If ever he talked about his family going anywhere, he would never talk about the family as a whole,” West recalled. “It would always be Mom and them went to church, or Mom and them went to the movies. It was like she was the only one in the whole family, and the rest just were along for the ride. It was like that even after she died. He still talked about her like she was living.”

Both his parents wanted the best for him

Though Elvis and Gladys were particularly close, both his parents wanted the best for him. They had little money, but his parents made sure he had everything he wanted. After Elvis graduated from high school, his parents even bought him a car. This was something that few people in their community could afford.

“He was about to get into a battered old Lincoln coupe. It was green and about ten years old,” West recalled. “His mummy and daddy had bought it for him. It was hard for them to pay for it, but it gives you some idea how much they loved him to scrape together that kind of money. Not many boys his age, nineteen I think he was, had a car of their own. No sir.”

Elvis Presley’s mom wanted to make sure he was taken care of after her death

As Elvis grew older, Gladys’ health began to worsen. West, who had protected Elvis throughout high school, said Gladys always asked him to make sure Elvis was safe. On one of their last meetings, she made the same request she always did. This time, though, West felt she was putting more weight behind her words. 

“Man, that dear lady knew she was dying,” he said. “She never said anything like that, but the way she was talking, it was as if it was all over. She knew she didn’t have long. When I got up to say goodbye, she just sort of called me back, and she said what I had heard her say a hundred times: ‘Bob, look after my boy.’ When she said it this time it was different. There was a sort of, I don’t know, a sort of finality to the sound of her voice, like as if that was the last time she would ever say it to me. It was.”

West said that throughout his career as Elvis’ bodyguard, he frequently thought about Gladys’ request.