Personal Life
As Presley's fame grew, people became interested in Parker as well. For a time, he lied about his childhood, claiming to have been born in Huntington, West Virginia and to have run away at an early age to join a circus run by an uncle. The truth about his early years was revealed when his family in the Netherlands recognized him in photographs of him standing next to Presley. Parker's brother Adam "Ad" van Kuijk visited Parker in Los Angeles in 1961. Parker acknowledged his brother and introduced him to Presley. Parker also was informed that his mother died in 1958, never knowing what happened with her son after he left in 1929. The claim of Parker's Dutch heritage was confirmed when Parker tried to avert a lawsuit in 1982 by asserting that he was a Dutch citizen. In 1993, Dutch TV director Jorrit van der Kooi talked to him in Dutch about the Netherlands. Parker was not aware that his sister Adriana had died a few years before.
Read more about this topic: Colonel Tom Parker
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