ST. LOUIS — It’s been more than 45 years since Elvis died on August 16th, 1977, and it was a shock to almost everybody except one St. Louis area man. It was June 21, 1977 when Harold Wayne Ward had the dream.
“I dreamed that he had come to my house and he said, ‘Wayne, I want you to play at a funeral.’ I was praying and singing this song, Take my hand, precious Lord.”
As the dream continued,. Wayne and the King began to sing the hymn together and they were joined by Wayne’s deceased father on violin and a choir. Wayne says the music moved the king to tears.
“And I said, ‘hey, since you’re here and you can sing better than I can, why don’t you just sing the song and I’ll play it. How’s that?’ He said, ‘No, it’s not possible.’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ Then he said, ‘Because the funeral you’re playing for is mine,” said Ward.
At that point in the dream, Wayne says he saw a casket with Elvis inside and a white suit with a red shirt. He then woke up, and the next morning he told the story to his mother.
“She said, ‘Wayne, maybe you ought to call Elvis and tell him about your dream,” said Ward.
He couldn’t reach the king by phone, so he wrote him a letter and sent a tape containing the song they had sung in the dream. He never heard from Elvis before he died, and he went on to write a tribute song to Elvis that he recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis in 1983.
That was pretty much the end of it for decades. Then Ward found a certified mail receipt marked June 27th, 1977. It was signed by the recipient of the package, Elvis Presley.
