Elvis' nurse Marian J. Cocke has died: 'She was loved by all, and she loved Elvis'
Marian J. Cocke was not anElvis Presleyfan in 1975. For the veteran Baptist Memorial Hospital nurse, the celebrity entertainer assigned to the floor she supervised was a patient, not an icon.
In fact, Elvis was an inconvenience: He arrived on her day off, requiring her to work extra hours.
Mrs. Cocke soon changed her tune in regards to the famous singer. For the next two years, she served as Elvis Presley's nurse during his hospital stays and atGraceland. She became not just a healthcare provider but a friend, confidante and mother figure.
"You were the person that he always counted on," Elvis' former wife,Priscilla Presley, wrote last week on Instagram. "Thank you for always taking care of him."
The admiration apparently was mutual. In reference to theShelby County Medical Examiner autopsy reportthat stated that Elvis had an "enlarged" heart, Mrs. Cocke said, in a 2002 interview: "This was no surprise to me. Elvis had the biggest heart of anyone I've ever known."
Marian Justice Cocke, 98, a longtime Memphis resident, died March 5 at a Bartlett care home. Services will be at 1 p.m. March 21 at Memorial Park Funeral Home, 5068 Poplar, with visitation at noon. Burial will follow in Forest Hill Cemetery Midtown, 1661 Elvis Presley Blvd.
Mrs. Cocke was Elvis' nurse at Baptist (where she worked until the hospital was closed in 2000) and also at Graceland for the final two years of the life of the man known as theKing of Rock 'n' Roll.
Presley and his physician, Dr. George Nichopoulos, apparently were so taken with Mrs. Cocke during Elvis' 1975 hospitalization that they insisted she help care for the singer at his Whitehaven mansion, when Elvis needed treatment for high blood pressure, fluid retention and other ailments. (His 1975 hospitalization was attributed to "fatigue," according to newspaper reports.)
“I’m sure she was the best nurse ever,” said Hal Lansky, 72, president ofLansky Brothers, the long-established Memphis haberdashery that bills itself as “Clothier to the King,” in reference to its most famous and loyal customer. “Her kindness was unbelievable. She was loved by all, and she loved Elvis.”
In "Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley," the definitive biography of Elvis in the last 20 years of his life, author Peter Guralnick described Mrs. Cocke as "the motherly nurse... upon whom [Elvis] relied for comfort and consolation."
"They spent hour after hour talking about the most mundane subjects," Guralnick wrote. "In Mrs. Cocke's eyes, he was nothing but a very thoughtful, reflective and considerate — if very subdued — young man."
During her intermittent residencies at Graceland, Mrs. Cocke slept in the bedroom of Elvis' daughter, Lisa Marie Presley. She set up a strategic "breakfast nook" in the room, using food as the bait to get Elvis up and out of bed. "She made him banana pudding and darned his socks," Guralnick wrote. (In 1999, The Commercial Appeal published Mrs. Cocke's recipe for the "Big Boss Man Banana Pudding" she made for Elvis; the final instruction reads: "Top with whipped cream.")
In her own book about her experiences, "I Called Him Babe: Elvis Presley's Nurse Remembers," published in 1979 by Memphis State University Press, Mrs. Cocke wrote that she, Elvis and Linda Thompson (Elvis' girlfriend) would sometimes stay up late talking, during what Elvis called "pajama parties." She said she and Elvis often watched television together, and Elvis "would laugh until he cried over some of the antics of Tim Conway and Harvey Korman" on "The Carol Burnett Show."
Mrs. Cocke said she refused to take pay for her time at Graceland, but Elvis gave her some notable presents, including a white 1976 Pontiac Grand Prix, which he had delivered to Baptist Hospital, and a diamond-studded gold cross.
The Pontiac — an upgrade from Mrs. Cocke's 1971 Ford Galaxy — was front page news in both The Commercial Appeal and the evening newspaper, the Memphis Press-Scimitar. "I told him I really didn't need a new car," said Mrs. Cocke, in the Press-Scimitar. "He told me, 'It makes me happy to see you happy.'"
On Aug. 16, 1977, Mrs. Cocke was called in to work by Baptist, she said, but Presley was dead by the time she arrived at the hospital. "My boy was gone," she wrote in her book.
Mrs. Cocke's nursing career stretched back to the middle of the previous century. A 1943 graduate of Whitehaven High School, she earned a nursing degree in 1949 from Holy Name of Jesus Hospital (now Riverview Regional Medical Center) in Gadsden, Alabama, then returned to Memphis. In 1951, she married Robert Cocke, a longtime Goldsmith's employee, who died in 2006. The couple had one child, Katey Cocke Worrell, who died of cancer in 2001.
After Elvis' death, Mrs. Cocke became part of what Lansky called an "inner circle" of Elvis associates who participated in various tributes, fan events and Graceland celebrations. For years, Mrs. Cocke hosted an annual fundraising Elvis Presley memorial dinner at The Peabody, to benefit such causes as the Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center.
“There’s not many people left that knew Elvis," Lansky said. "People that did know Elvis are leaving this planet. But once you met Elvis, you were mesmerized.”
In her social media tribute, Priscilla Presley wrote: "Marian you will be greatly missed. Your spirit touched many people and especially Elvis."
"Elvis was my friend and I was protective of him when he was living and I'm still protective of him," Mrs. Cocke said in a 2002 interview with NurseZone, an online health magazine. "He meant a lot to me and he'll always mean a lot to me."
In a 1979 interview in the Press-Scimitar, she said of Elvis: "He was like my son to me.
