Four buddies had recently graduated from high school, and
over beers one night were discussing their immediate futures. Since none of
them really knew what they wanted to do with their lives, and they were all
sick of school and not looking forward to college, they decided to volunteer
for the draft.
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| Ken Stenzel in Germany 1958 |
That was in 1957, and one of those guys was Ken Stenzel. This,
then, is the story of how Ken, a kid from the small town of WaKeeney, Kansas,
went to Germany as a U.S. soldier, and ended up becoming friends with another
soldier, a guy who would become so famous that the world still knows his name.
Ken was born into a German family that had settled in
WaKeeney. “I couldn’t speak English until I started grade school,” Ken said. He
was in the 4-H program, where he competed in square dance among other things.
After high school, his girlfriend went off to college, so Ken became friends
with her friend, a girl named Darlene, and soon they began dating. Darlene’s
father was German, and while the families lived about 10 miles apart, and
Darlene also was in the 4-H program, they didn’t know each other until after
high school.
On Feb. 25, 1958, Ken left Darlene behind with the promise
to write, and he and his buddies began basic training in Ft. Hood, Texas. “We
learned how to march, shine boots, and things like that,” Ken said of those
first eight weeks. The second eight weeks brought more intensive training, such
as shooting guns. Ken was assigned to the Army Infantry.
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Later that year, after boot camp and a short leave, Ken
traveled to Savannah, Georgia, where he boarded a ship that would take him on
an eight-day journey across the Atlantic Ocean to Germany. Ken said to imagine
50 men crammed together on a long narrow ship, sleeping in bunk beds that were
stacked four rows high. Ken had the bottom bunk, not a great spot, he said,
considering the water was choppy and some of the guys in the upper bunks had
bouts of seasickness.
When they reached the port of Bremerhaven, they were ushered
off the ship and straight into the field for training. Life in the Army had
begun.
Some time after that, Ken had a chance encounter with fame. He was in
the latrine, he said, when he saw another soldier who he thought he recognized.
“I’m Ken Stenzel,” he said to the soldier. The soldier replied, “I’m Elvis
Presley.”
It was still early in Presley’s career, and though he was
already an international star, he wasn’t really that big of a deal to someone
like Ken, who only marginally knew of him. And when Ken wrote to Darlene that
he had met Elvis, she wasn’t that impressed either. “I had a scrap of paper
with his name on it, and I threw it away,” Darlene said. Nor did she keep the
photos of Elvis that Ken had sent. At that time, her attention was really only
for Ken.
After that first encounter, Ken said, he saw Elvis in the
mess hall, the PX, and elsewhere. Elvis was just one of the soldiers, Ken said,
and having beers with him wasn’t anything special. That changed when Ken told
Elvis that he spoke German.
“He was dating a girl who was German,” Ken said, “and he
asked me to go along with him and listen, and interpret what she was saying.”
The girl did speak enough English to get by, but having an interpreter would
greatly help with conversation. Ken said he and Elvis rode the train to
Frankfurt, where the girl was living in housing Elvis provided. On subsequent
visits, they rode in Elvis’s car.
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| Elvis Presley photo credit itineraries.nbcnews.com |
There wasn’t the onslaught of media like there is today, Ken
said, but still, girls always seemed to know when Elvis was around. “It was fun
to watch,” Ken said. “Elvis was the most down-to-earth person I could ever talk
to. He never acted like he was better than you. And he was a Christian too.”
Elvis often picked up the tab though, Ken said, when they had been out on the
town.
Ken said that although Elvis never did any concerts for
them, he did spend many an evening sitting in a chair in the barracks, singing
a little as he strummed his guitar and wrote songs. Since Elvis was in the tank
battalion, Ken said, their interaction was more of a social nature. Ken served
as Elvis’s interpreter when necessary, and at one point, found himself riding
in a car with Elvis and a certain young girl he had met named Priscilla.
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| Ken Stenzel in front of personnel carrier he drove |
After 18 months, Ken returned to the states, and his
friendship with Elvis was left behind. Through the years, as Elvis’s fame grew,
Ken would see him on the television occasionally. But he became dismayed to see
what had happened to the kind young man he had known. “I didn’t even want to
watch him,” Ken said. “The media made him too big too fast. They should have
just left him alone, let him do his music.”
Ken and Darlene married, and recently celebrated their 54th
wedding anniversary. They have a son and daughter, and six grandchildren. Ken
owned and managed a hardware store, and later became an insurance agent. Then
came the news on August 16, 1977, that Elvis had died. Ken said his secretary
at the time, a huge Elvis fan, had to take several days off work to grieve. Ken
grieved too, for the boy he once knew. “I was sad,” Ken said, “it was
heartbreaking. I had known him pretty well. I still blame the media for what
happened to him.” Ken had heard about the drug and alcohol abuse, but said that
when he knew Elvis, all he had ever done was have a beer or two like the rest
of them.
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| Ken & Darlene Stenzel circa 1970s |
On a vacation one year, Ken and Darlene toured Graceland,
Elvis’s estate. There, in the museum, Ken spotted a field jacket worn by Elvis.
He turned to Darlene and told her he knew about that field jacket. “I was
visiting Elvis in the barracks one night,” Ken said. “It started pouring down
rain and I didn’t have my jacket, so Elvis gave me his field jacket to wear
while I walked back.” Ken hung up the jacket to dry, and didn’t think about it
again until he was getting ready to head back to the states. “I took the jacket
back to him (Elvis),” Ken said, “and to say goodbye. If I’d have kept that
jacket, I’d be a rich man today.”
Elvis would have been 80 on January 8 of this year had he
lived. For some of the legions of Elvis fans even now, perhaps they will enjoy
knowing that their idol was really a decent sort of guy at heart, who was once
a friend to another soldier named Ken.
