Presley Admirers Love Him True
by Bob Heaton
Wichita Eagle
October 1974

Mr. and Mrs. Willis Bennett came to town from Salina to listen to Elvis Monday night. They didn't have tickets but they came anyhow. "We hoped we'd find someone selling tickets at the Arena," Mrs. Bennett said. They did. By 7 PM, the Bennetts had bought eight tickets for the performance and had resold three of them. "We first found a guy with four tickets," she said. "He wanted $65 for them, take it or leave it. We took it." The tickets originally sold for $10 each. "Then we heard about a guy who had four on the floor of the arena, right up close," Mrs. Bennett continued. "So we bought them and began trying to sell the first four for what we paid." By 7.30 PM, one ticket remained at $16.25.

Elvis' concert at the Henry Levitt Arena at Wichita State University had been sold for weeks prior to Monday's one-nighter. Presley fans began filling the arena for the 8.30 performance about 6.30 PM. An hour before the first drum-roll, traffic was backed up on Hillside from the 21st Street entrance of the arena parking lot all the way to 13th Street on the south.

As is customary with a Presley concert, music lovers were bombarded with memorabilia offers before they could get out of their cars to begin their trek to the arena. Programs were hawked in the parking lot for $2. If that was too steep, Presley buttons, small and large and kingsize, were offered. A wide variety of Elvis posters, showing The Performer in sequins, capes, leotards and perhaps a tutu or two were concurrently hawked.

But the main attraction was The Entertainer. He packed them in. He always does. Mrs. Bennett said she and her husband came to the concert for the benefit of their daughter Terry, 8. "I like him," Mrs. Bennett said, but it is Terry who idolizes the ageless singer. "He's out of sight," Terry sighed. Maybe she didn't realize Elvis probably had charmed her mother in much the same way almost 20 years before.

Courtesy Of Scott Hayward