Linda Kelly, Sherry Bane, and Mickie Mattson wrote to President Dwight D. Eisenhower from Montana. They told him “We think its bad enough to send Elvis Presley in the Army, but if you cut his sideburns off we will just die!”
During the early 1950s, all American men were required to register for the draft, and many were called to serve. Elvis was no exception. Inducted into the Army in 1958, he insisted on being treated like everyone else. He took the required haircut in stride, coining the phrase, “Hair today, gone tomorrow.”
Text adapted from “Rock’n’Roll Heroes: Letter to President Eisenhower” in the May 1985 National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) publication Social Education.
