by Jacob G. Hornberger

March 5, 2026

The high point of my life occurred when I was 14 years old. That was the day on which I met the King. It’s been downhill ever since.

Our meeting took place at the end of my eighth-grade year at Lamar Junior High School (named for the second president of the Republic of Texas, after Sam Houston) in my hometown of Laredo. We were on a long-distance road trip to a national student-council convention in Wisconsin. We were in one car, which included two teacher-sponsors and four eighth-grade students.

By happenstance, we stopped at a motel in Oklahoma City. The four of us students were hanging out by the pool in the late afternoon. There was suddenly a buzz among people around us stating that Elvis Presley, the undisputed King of rock and roll, was staying at our motel. There was a great big black RV parked at the motel, which was said to belong to him.

I asked the people around us if they knew which room he was staying in. They pointed to a room on the second floor. I walked up the stairs, headed to that room, and knocked on the door.

A big burly unfriendly looking guy opened the door. I said, “Excuse me, sir, but I heard that Elvis Presley was staying in this room and I was wondering if I could meet him.”

He gruffly responded, “There’s no Elvis here, kid. Now get the heck out of here.” He closed the door in my face.

At around 11 p.m., the four of us were by the pool playing cards. Suddenly, guess who strolls up. Yep, the King himself, dressed entirely in black. He smiled and said, “I heard y’all were looking for me.”

Elvis was one of the nicest people I have ever met. He conversed with us for about 20 minutes. I remember only one part of the conversation. I asked him, “Is Ann- Margret (his very attractive co-star in the movie Viva Las Vegas) here with you?” He laughed and responded, “No, but I sure wish she was!”

The reason for my thinking about my meeting Elvis was that last weekend I saw the new documentary at the movie theater entitled EPIC — Elvis Presley in Concert. I highly recommend it. It is a fantastic collection of excerpts from various of Elvis’s concerts during his life, along with personal comments that show perfectly what we discovered on that fateful night in Oklahoma — that Elvis was one heckuva nice guy.

The documentary touched on Elvis’s military service and what happened to him and his career after that. There wasn’t any commentary on it, but that’s what I will do now—comment on what the U.S. government — and specifically the U.S. national-security establishment — did to Elvis Presley.

I should begin by observing that my father, along with most other parents, hated Elvis Presley. He especially hated his “long” hair (i.e., no crew cut) and his extremely radical rock and roll performances, especially his “wiggling his hips” while performing. In fact, when Ed Sullivan, to his everlasting credit, featured Elvis on his television show, the cameramen were instructed not to keep the focus above his waist.

Of course, parents hated rock and roll in general. Their music was that of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby.

But teenagers loved both Elvis and rock and roll. Girls, in particular, were going crazy over him — screaming and crying during his live performances. One of the funny aspects of the EPIC documentary was seeing those teenage girls going crazy over Elvis when he began performing in Las Vegas — when those girls were now in their 30s!

But parents were not amused. They felt that Elvis and rock and roll were destroying the youth of America. Even worse, Elvis was a white man whose singing sometimes sounded like a black man. Many considered him and rock and roll (and the civil rights movement) to be a grave threat to “national security.”

The U.S. national-security establishment used its system of conscription to rein in and almost destroy Elvis Presley. Using the draft, they ordered him to give up his music career to serve the U.S. military. The demand perfectly reflected the role of master that the U.S. national-security  state had come to play in American life, with the citizenry serving as its serfs or servants.

The military’s mission, of course, is to smash all sense of individuality out of soldiers. Through relentless and ridiculous regimentation and drills, soldiers are indoctrinated into becoming mindless automatons who blindly obey whatever orders they are given. Of course, we see this phenomenon today with respect to those soldiers who are murdering people on the high seas and killing people in unconstitutional and illegal wars of aggression.

During his two years serving the military, Elvis, not surprisingly, become passive and docile. Ironically, this was when my father and other parents began liking him — because in their eyes, he was now a “patriot.” (My mother was always indifferent and even somewhat supportive of the rock-and-roll revolution.)

As an aside, I should mention that the national-security establishment also considered the Beatles and Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones to be grave threats to “national security,” especially after LBJ, the Pentagon, and the CIA got the U.S. embroiled in Vietnam. Of course, they were unable to draft and destroy them because they were British citizens. The FBI did investigate John Lennon as a threat to “national security.”

It’s probably also worth mentioning that they never drafted Bob Dylan because he was classified 4F (health disqualification). They also never drafted Buddy Holly because he was classified 4A — a marital dependency deferment; and then he died in a plane crash in 1959 (“the day the music died”), when he was 22, during the time that Elvis was being forced to serve the military.

It’s probably also worth mentioning that the Pentagon tried to do do Mohammad Ali what they did to Elvis. Ali refused to comply with their draft orders and ultimately prevailed in the Supreme Court on a religious exemption, but not before they had destroyed the best years of his boxing career during which he was prohibited from boxing professionally.

By the time he got out of the service, Elvis had his individualism and radical music smashed out of him by the Pentagon’s system of military regimentation and indoctrination. He was still popular among teens, but young people knew that he now lacked the anti-establishment edge that groups like the Beatles and the Stones were displaying.

Consequently, Elvis ended up doing a string of ridiculous, mindless movies that almost destroyed him. But fortunately, Elvis found himself, left Hollywood, and began performing again in Las Vegas. The EPIC documentary captures perfectly his rediscovery of himself and his true radical role as a rock-and-roll singer.