Elvis Presley is everywhere. Twenty-three years after he died, the man and his music still dominate our popular culture. Television, radio, and print ads portray him selling everything from iced tea to insurance. A charitable auction in October of 1999 had bidders spending nearly five million dollars for personal items including a Lincoln Continental, his draft card, even a cigar box. Each year city officials in Memphis, TN proclaim January 8th, to be "Elvis Presley Day" as thousands of pilgrims gather at Graceland, his home, to celebrate and remember on the anniversary of his birth.

Yes, Elvis Presley is everywhere. And so are the Elvis impersonators.

The New York Times once estimated that there were 35,000 Elvis impersonators throughout the world. Who are all these people? Why do they do it? Are they helping to preserve the memory of the King of Rock n Roll? Or are they hurting it?

"Years ago, especially right after Elvis died, just about anybody could do Elvis," says Gary Hill, an Elvis entertainer living in King, WI. "Throw on a wig, throw on a suit and people would come."

"The sad part of that was that people wanted to see so much of Elvis because he was gone. It produced a lot of bad, terrible people doing Elvis."

It was Gary's disappointment in the current crop of Elvises that convinced him to take up the cape full-time in 1990.

"I started out that I wasn't going to get caught up in the Elvis thing like some of them do to the point where I had to worry exactly how I sounded, how I looked, but I did. I don't think that anybody that does Elvis can help it. I had to stop and readjust what I was doing on stage. I have to let a little bit of Gary come through and let Gary say, 'People I love Elvis, I just want to give you something back.'"

When not entertaining at supper clubs and casinos throughout the upper Midwest, Gary devotes a lot of his time performing at nursing homes and hospitals., including an upcoming benefit show for the Children's Miracle Network in Stevens Point on Feb. 10.

"The one thing I am more proud of than anything else is that I was able to perform and raise money to help the kids out. That makes more of a difference. My goal is to let the people know that there is a little more to Elvis than a suit and a hairdo."

While a close physical resemblance to Elvis is beneficial to an entertainer, it can be potentially damaging to someone choosing a different path, especially politics.

"In grade school it was always the Beatles or Elvis. I was always Elvis," says Bill Lorge of growing up in Bear Creek, WI.

By the mid 1980's he was making as much as $500 a night as an Elvis Impersonator. But being born in the State Senate office of his father a week before his father's reelection must leave something in your blood. In 1988 Bill Lorge was elected to the Wisconsin State Legislature where he served for 10 years.

"I used Elvis to lighten up other people's day, to make other people happy. But the more I did Elvis the more my days were numbered as a politician. "

In 1998 he began a campaign to run for Governor as a Republican. He announced that he would put the name William "Elvis" Lorge on the ballot.

"That just shifted the whole attitude of that gubernatorial campaign. It basically went up as 'He's nuts. He's not serious about this. He's crazy.'" Bill withdrew from the race.

He ran again in 2000. This time for the U.S. Senate but lost the backing of the Republican Party and then the primary.

Now living in Madison, WI, Bill looks to the future and contemplates another run for governor. "Maybe I'll win," he says with a smile, "then we'll call the governor's mansion Graceland."

"I like Elvis. I'm a big fan. I always hoped he was really alive and just under the witness protection program because of the rumors about the Mafia and the gambling in Vegas," said Lorge, "and that 10 years from now we find out he'd just passed away in Hawaii,, and that he lived a happy life."

I couldn't agree more. Happy Birthday, Elvis. Aloha.

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