What is it about Elvis Presley that keeps his image burning so brightly in our culture's consciousness? In the decades following his death, the singer—who would have turned 80 on January 8—has been elevated to levels bordering on the religious: the sites he visited turned into pilgrimage destinations, the items he touched transformed into pop culture relics.
Graceland, his Memphis home, averages 600,000 visitors a year and has spawned duplicates both miniature and life-size. But beyond the neon lights and shag carpets, in places like Connecticut and Arkansas, live people who believe deeply in the importance of preserving the history—and legacy—of Elvis Presley in unexpected ways.
Within Elvis' prolific career—spanning music and movies in a way that pop culture icons hadn't managed before—it's easy for a single haircut to get lost. For years, the building that once housed the Fort Chaffee barbershop, on the Arkansas base where Elvis enlisted in 1958, sat deteriorating. The building had no electricity, and the chairs and sinks that once lined the shop were gone—gutted with the rest of the building's interior when the space was converted to private use in 1990.
On March 25, 1958, when Elvis received his military buzzcut at Fort Chaffee, the area teemed with media and spectators. Some feared that in losing his trademark sideburns, Elvis would also lose his desire to continue with a career in music. Dubbed "the haircut heard round the world" by members of the press, the event was a major draw for Fort Chaffee, a historic World War II army base that opened in 1941 after Pearl Harbor.
