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Is it Graceland?

No, it’s Dr. John Brineman’s office at St. Vincent in Little Rock. The pathologist decorated the walls with over 200 pieces of Elvis Presley memorabilia.

Brineman wasn’t always an Elvis fan, even in Presley’s heyday.

So when did it start?

“I guess it was a few years after he died,” Brineman said. “I started to get really tickled by all the stuff that would appear on those publications by the grocery store checkout line, the Weekly World News and the National Enquirer.”
In other words, those same publications that tout Elvis sightings in Las Vegas or claim that he’s actually working at a Burger King in Florida.

Regardless, “I just started paying attention and shortly after that, I decided I was going to start collecting all this stuff.”

First came the photos and albums, but for Brineman, it became more than just the kitschy aspect of Elvis.

“I got more interested in him as a person, and the more I looked into him, the more I admired him as an American archetype,” Brineman said. “My favorite thing about Elvis as a person is that unlike most of us, when we get rich and famous, we start changing ourselves. Elvis never did that. You can see that right off when you go to Graceland. It is just a gussied-up version of a basic, Southern American home.”

OK, not every Southern home has a Jungle Room with green shag carpeting on the floor and ceiling, but his point is clear.

Brineman has been to Graceland four times. “It’s not excessive. If I had said 12, then that would have been a little weird.”

Brineman sees Elvis’ universal and international appeal.

Brineman certainly isn’t alone in visiting Graceland; in the last year, even out-going Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi paid a visit along with President Bush.

All because Presley’s music lives on.

“I love music, I love R&B,” Brineman said. “What Elvis did more than anybody else was to expose a non-African-American audience to R&B back in the day when there wasn’t a whole lot of cross-over. Because of him, everybody in America started to connect with the blues and soul. He just opened the door, and all this great stuff came through.”

Brineman has also toured Tupelo, Miss., the birthplace of Elvis.

“It is just a classic rags-to-riches story,” he said. “As a military guy, I can appreciate something else he did. Here was this famous person and when he went into the army, he went into the army. They wanted to have him tour as an entertainer and he was like, no I’m in the army and I’ll do the army stuff. … It is an amazing American story.”

An Arkansas Import
Brineman isn’t like most doctors in Arkansas. He wasn’t born or raised in the state. He didn’t go to college in Arkansas or medical school or even do a residency in Arkansas.

As a matter of fact, Elvis, due to his military commitment at Fort Chaffee in western Arkansas, had spent more time than Brineman had in Arkansas before
Brineman moved to Little Rock.

So, why Arkansas?

“It was totally by accident,” Brineman said, who had been a doctor in the army and was in Texas at the end of his active duty tour. “At that time, my younger sister was living with her husband in southern Missouri and to see her, I’d see this part of the country. To get to my sister’s house, I’d come through Little Rock and every time I came through here, I always thought it was gorgeous.”
Brineman, who was raised in Japan, had spent a large part of his military career in Germany, and he had a far-flung family.

“My parents were living in India, my oldest sister was in Indonesia, while my youngest sister was in Missouri,” he said, “So at that time, I had no fixed base in the United States.”

Brineman’s father, who has now retired from the CIA, had settled the family in Virginia so, “I’ve always liked the ambience of the South, the pace of life here.”

Little Rock was appealing for those reasons, and the “city is big enough to have most of the stuff you want easy access to.”

So in 1989, Brineman had two places picked out and, “If I could find work, I’d come.”

He got a job and since then, “I’ve been driving the same car. I’ve got the ugliest car in the doctors’ parking lot. An 18-year-old Toyota that used to be red, but it is pink now.”

Arkansas was the right decision for Brineman. He met his wife, another doctor at St. Vincent, and he said, “The guys here are very gracious, and this hospital is just delightful.”

Not that Brineman spends as much time at the hospital as he used to.

“After Sept. 11, I rejoined the army,” Brineman said. “A lot of us guys who had been out got back in.”

First a major, Brineman is now a lieutenant colonel assigned to a unit based in Salt Lake City.

“I don’t have to go every month,” Brineman said. “I can do some training and some other things, so I end up out there about six or seven times a year.”



July 2007

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