For Sandy Nicometo of the Village of Santo Domingo, the death late last month of Davada “Dee” Stanley Presley, 88, brought back 40-year-old memories of a Las Vegas hotel and time she spent with Elvis Presley.
Davada was Elvis’ stepmother and she and Nicometo became close friends through the 1970s, during the death of Elvis in 1977, Davada’s divorce the same year from Elvis’s father, Vernon, and Vernon’s death in 1979.
Nicometo said Vernon was grateful for their friendship.
“He loved it when I would come out from time to time and take her off his hands,” she said. “It was an interesting time in my life.”
She met the Presley family when Dee came to Jacksonville to see her children from a previous marriage. Dee and Vernon stopped by the Bambu Luau, a restaurant Nicometo ran with her former husband. The friendship led to an invitation for her to spend three days with the Presley family in Las Vegas, where Elvis was performing. By this time, Elvis had split up with his wife, Priscilla, and his girlfriend was Linda Thompson, a Tennessee beauty queen.
Nicometo and Elvis chatted after the show in his dressing room.
“Sandy, I guess you were wondering why I was wiggling around on stage at one point, but my pantyhose got twisted,” he said. She told him she could relate to that because her pantyhose got twisted, too, as she dressed quickly to come to the concert.
The Presleys were generous, Nicometo said, and Vernon, who handled the money, would get upset sometimes at Elvis’ spending habits.
“If Elvis bought something for himself, he’d buy one for everybody,” she said. “He’d say, ‘Don’t worry, Vernon will pay for it.’”
Nicometo said she recalls spending the Christmas holidays with the Presleys and she went shopping with Dee and Vernon when they picked out a ring for Elvis.
“I also had a ring I took to reset and Dee said let’s put a couple emeralds and diamonds in that ring,” she said.
Vernon Presley married Dee in 1960, two years after the death of Gladys, his first wife and Elvis’ mother. The met in Germany, where Elvis was stationed when he was in the Army. Elvis refused to attend his father’s second wedding because he didn’t approve of Dee at the time. But Sandy said they learned to get along over the years.
“She and Elvis, to my knowledge, were OK,” Nicometo said, adding that Dee was more flamboyant than Gladys, which Vernon liked.
Dee and her sons wrote a book about her life with the Presley family called “Elvis We Love You Tender,” published in 1980. But she angered many Elvis fans when she wrote a second tell-all book in 1997, claiming that Elvis was gay and had a relationship with a male friend. The National Enquirer picked up the story, but that book never was published.
Nicometo said she doesn’t know anything about Dee’s claims and the two stayed in touch into the 1990s, when Dee was broke and borrowed money from Sandy.
As for Elvis’ lingering popularity long after his death, Nicometo said it’s not hard to understand the reason.
“He seems to be ageless,” she said. “He’s one of the trendsetters in music. Young people like his music today.”
