Chattanooga: Elvis fame opening doors for stepbrother’s sermons

Elvis may have left the building, but his stepbrother has arrived here.

Rick Stanley, a longtime evangelist who was raised at Graceland in Memphis after his mother married Mr. Presley’s father, recently was hired as director of ministry advancement and assistant to the president of Tennessee Temple University.

“I’m the world’s oldest hippie preacher,” he said. “In this season of my life, I want to pour the next 15 to 20 years into helping students and really getting out into the community.”

For more than 20 years, since his graduation from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Mr. Stanley, 55, has spoken about his life and testimony at churches, prisons, schools and other venues around the world.

“He is quick to say doors open because of who his brother is,” said David Wilhoite, development director at Tennessee Temple University, “but once you get to know him, there is so much more to him than Elvis’ brother.”

Mr. Stanley was 6 when his mother married Vernon Presley. Moving into Graceland — with his older brother and younger brother — was akin to moving into Disneyland.

As he grew up, he said, he met many other popular musicians — including the Beatles — and saw many incidents of his stepbrother’s generosity, such as his purchase of a Cadillac for a woman who was looking longingly at one in a showroom.

Later, Mr. Stanley said, he served as Mr. Presley’s bodyguard and consultant. He was responsible for the singer’s choice to wear leather onstage in the late 1960s, he said, but had no input on the iconic white jumpsuits Mr. Presley wore near the end of his career.

In his role as consultant, even as he battled his own demons of alcohol and street drugs, he had a first-hand look at the singer’s prescription drug addiction.

“Everybody has issues,” Mr. Stanley said. “He was a man after God’s own heart, but he had a chink in his armor.”

Indeed, Mr. Presley, who made a profession of faith at the age of 10 and recommitted his life during a talk with evangelist Rex Humbard the year he died, “felt a call to preach but didn’t feel he had the ability,” his stepbrother said.

Mr. Stanley said even his last conversation with his stepbrother in the early morning hours of Aug. 16, 1977, the day Mr. Presley died, concerned faith. Mr. Stanley said he told Mr. Presley about a woman friend who continually had prayed for him and telling him he could experience forgiveness for his wanton ways.

“She’s telling the truth,” the singer told his stepbrother. “Man looks on the outside, but God looks on the inside. People who talk about Jesus really care.”

Hours later, Mr. Presley died.

Two months later, Mr. Stanley, with the encouragement of the woman who had been praying for him — now his wife — made a faith commitment and began his own ministry.