>Day 1: Friday, August 9th, 2002

Good evening. This is Tom Corcoran, the official scribe for this expedition, making my first journal entry on Friday, August 9th, while sitting in my room at the beautiful Bavarian Inn in Sharpsburg, West Virginia. As I type, I am looking out of the balcony of our room which is perched on a bluff overlooking a great bend in the Potomac River. It was from very close to here that Robert E. Lee made his fateful decision to invade the North and cross the Potomac from Virginia into Maryland. But I digress.

The logistics of the Great Elvis Expedition, a marvel of precision in Wiley Pearson’s planning over many months, broke down completely today. The meltdown started with Ron Arslanian seeing stars from the corners of his eyes at 9:15 A.M. this morning, which were the result of a head on collision he had last night with the beefy hand of one of Rick’s guests leaning down to fill his mug from the beer keg last night. Rick and Ron went to Rick’s ophthalmologist who diagnosed his condition as a post-vitriol detachment. He dilated Ron’s eyes, which are now fine, and his only advice was not to go on any motor coach trips to the South. Total elapsed time, 1.5 hours.

Undaunted, Rick, Ron, and Tom, along with Ed the motor coach driver and his trusty dog Rusty (along with a badly deflated life size doll named Stephanie, who is the designated ER nurse for the trip (but I digress) sped towards the Schuylkill Expressway, determined to make up some serious time. Alas, the Schuylkill would have its way and we were then stuck in a traffic jam for another 1.5 hour delay. At this point, a command decision was made by Rick Lieb that, instead of picking Wiley Pearson up at his home is Bethesda, MD, we would make Wiley’s lovely wife Jane drive him 50 miles to meet us at Fredericksburg, Md. The only trouble, given the motor coach’s limited mobility, was agreeing on a place to meet and then having both vehicles arrive at the same place. We arrived first, and then waited for almost an hour while Wiley and Rick, communicating via cell phones, tried to triangulate our position. For two marines with training in jungle warfare and survival, it was by any measure a pathetic exercise. Finally at 3:00 P.M. the two vehicles did manage to meet, Jane gladly deposited her grumpy husband, and the entire band of brothers was now assembled.

Within one more hour, after careening through some very sharp turns on country roads (Rte 40 and 34) we arrived at our destination and are now in the midst of tying together the ragged shards of our plan and regrouping in our lovely rooms on the Potomac.

Did I mention the Band of Brothers? Yes, they are individually Rick, Wiley, Ron, and Tom. All have histories, and CVs that will withstand scrutiny, but there is something odd about them as a group. Posing as a group of 4 middle age men going to Graceland for the 25th Anniversary of the King’s death, there is a strong undercurrent of suspense and intrigue that only now is becoming evident. Instead of a common goal for this trip, it is becoming evident to me that there are in fact four separate and very different reasons for taking this trip. (and this does not count Ed, Rusty, and Destiny, all of whom have their own reasons as well for going to Graceland.) Not all of them, I fear, will come back, but I digress.)

Among the 4 principals, a capsule summary of their purported occupations and a hint at their secret reasons for making this pilgrimage to the so called grave of the King:

Wiley Pearson, a peripatetic retired marine colonel who finished out his illustrious military career at the Pentagon, and is now working as a high level Democratic operative in the State of Minnesota for the re-election campaign of Paul Wellstone. Why did he suddenly leave the campaign to join this expedition? What does Graceland have to do with the political balance of power in the U.S. Senate? Stay tuned.

Rick Lieb, also an ex-marine, successful financial services executive, who unexpectedly left his job last year solely to get ready for this trip. With a worldview largely formed while working in his parents’ deli in Belmont, Mass., what forces or demons are driving him southwards and what awaits him in Graceland? And what does this have to do with Rick’s plan to stabilize the stock market and thereby protect the retirement plans of millions of Americans, not to mention the world economy as a whole?

Ron Arslanian, the successful operator of a high-end optical store in Cambridge, who has the misfortune of being Rick Lieb’s brother-in-law. On the surface very calm and affable, Ron has a secret that he must conceal, at least until Graceland, from the rest of the group. Unbeknownst to his family and friends, he had worked feverishly for the last two weeks before the trip on a project in the back of his store.

Tom Corcoran, the director of a non-profit development corporation in Camden, New Jersey, who also spent 6 years with the Peace Corps in Chad and Benin, West Africa. Just before coming on this trip, Tom made an unexpected trip to Rome, where, on his last day, he was part of an audience at Castle Gondolfo with the Pope, who was just back from his strenuous trip to Canada, Guatemala, and Mexico. Is there any connection between the lightening-like trip to Rome and this trip to Graceland?

Each of these men is incredibly fit, strong, and endowed with cat-like reflexes but they are smart enough to hide these attributes behind rather generous paunches, lest someone begins to question their true identities and true purposes in joining hundreds of thousands of Americans and indeed people from all over the world who are now making their way to Graceland, converging from the four points of the globe.

Well, it is time to go to dinner where we will be served heaps of delicious German food by busty Teutonic waitresses wearing their native costumes. From the river comes the faint notes of Edelweiss, and we feel as if we are in the Sound of Music. Yet beneath this idyllic scene, there is the faint suspicion of a darker purpose surrounding this Inn. Is it that all of the men at the reception held their left hand over their right hand as if to restrain their right arm, or that all of the waitresses looked like the young Eva Braun? Why is there a very large day care facility in the basement that is closed to outsiders but from which one can hear German marshal music and the stomping of hundreds of little feet?

As I sit on the balcony waiting to go to dinner, I feel myself thinking like General Lee on that fateful summer evening 139 years ago. Should he cross the river, and take the fight to the North, gain recognition for the Confederacy from European powers, and menace Washington, D.C. all with the hope that Lincoln might then sue for peace? Or conversely, would the invasion stretch his supply lines beyond the breaking point, energize the North to its full fury, and result in a bloody repulse that the Army of Virginia could ill afford?

Sitting at this place, as dusk fell over the Potomac on the quiet summer night, Lee must have asked the same question that now plagues me. What would Elvis have done in this situation?

End of Day 1