Priscilla Presley was back in Germany on Thursday, standing face-to-face with a life-sized statue of her late ex-husband, Elvis Presley, dressed in his military uniform. The bronze figure sits in a public park in Bad Nauheim, the same town where Priscilla once went to school and met the man who would change her life.
She didn’t spend much time in class at the U.S. Air Force-run H. H. Arnold High School in Wiesbaden. She admits she and her friends had a routine: show up, get marked present, hop on a bus, hang around the city for a few hours, then return. Seeing the Elvis statue for the first time brought those memories back clearly, among others.
Priscilla Presley met her ex-husband, Elvis Presley, in Germany
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Before the move to Germany, Priscilla was living in Austin, Texas, preparing for high school. Her stepfather, an Air Force officer, got transferred to Germany, and the news didn’t sit well with her. She didn’t want to leave her friends behind. What she didn’t know was that Elvis Presley was stationed there, too.
Priscilla eventually met him, and it wasn’t long before their relationship grew. In 1963, at age 17, she left Germany behind and moved to Memphis to live under the same roof as Elvis, an arrangement allowed only after heavy conditions were laid down by both her parents and Elvis’s manager. She enrolled at Immaculate Conception High School and finished her final year there.
Priscilla Presley empathizes with military school kids
Priscilla says her time in military school had its downsides, and the biggest one was that people never stayed for long. She remembers how frustrating it was to make new friends, only for them to get transferred to another base weeks later. She still talks to a few classmates from those days, but most of them have moved on.
When asked to advise the students at her old school, Priscilla didn’t pretend to have any. She smiled and admitted she might not be the best role model, after all, she spent most of her high school years doing everything except staying in class.