Elvis & Hee-Haw

If you are from the South, you may remember the show Hee Haw.  If you do not know what Hee Haw is, you don't know what you missed from 1969-1997.  It's a classic. 

Growing up, our family watched Hee-Haw every Saturday night at 6:00pm on Channel 3.  The show was filled with comedy sketches, and the latest country music singer who had a #1 hit that week.  It was like Saturday Night Live--but instead of New York City, it was Nashville.  SNL gone country!  Like, backwoods country.  It was awesome. 

Skits like "The Cornfield," "Pickin’ and Grinnin’," "Pfft You Was Gone," and "Gloom, Despair and Agony On Me" were performed.  Some of my favorites were "Lulu's Truck Stop", "The Culhanes", and "the Gossip Girls".  (If you want to catch up on your Hee Haw skits, click here)

So you may be wondering where I may be going with this.

If you frequent here, you know that I reside in Memphis, TN.  But if you want to get technical, and if you ask hubby, we live in a suburb OUTSIDE of Memphis. (whatev)  I'm a Memphis girl and proud of it.

When people hear the word Memphis, you may immediately think of Graceland.  Do you know that I have never stepped foot in Elvis' mansion?  Nope.  Never been to Graceland.  Been here all my life.  I'm not sure why.  My mom has lived here all her life, and never been either.  When I get the gumption to go, usually the prices of tours puts me off.  It's kinda expensive for this thrifty girl.  I'm ok to drive down Elvis Presley Blvd. and see the mansion and gates, and the Lisa Marie airplane from my car. 

Graceland is particularly busy two times a year:  Elvis' Birthday Week, and Elvis' Death Week, which was a few weeks ago.   I never even realized just how many events that go on during these weeks until recently.

If you know about Elvis, he loved gospel music.  So every year they have a Southern Gospel Singin' with the Imperials as the headliner quartet.  My cousin sings in a quartet called Soul City, which opened for the Imperials, so we headed down to 'have church' at Graceland.

I may be a little biased, but Soul City rocked it out.  I personally think they were better than the Imperials. 

We were pretty close to the front, but there was this woman on the front row who caught my attention.  (and I'm sure a lot of other people's attention).   Being Elvis' death week and all, it's a great place to people watch, to say the least.

After the concert, I noticed my cousin Corey talking to this woman.  As I walked up, they were singing a Hee-Haw song.  Immediately my interest peaked.  Then she introduced herself as Nurse Goodbody from Hee-Haw. 

OMG!  How cool is that?!  So we stood there for a few minutes singing Hee-Haw songs and she was telling us some behind the scenes stories.  And of course we got our picture made with her!  Me and Corey were on cloud 9 the rest of the day. 

A couple of days later, someone asked what her name was.  Then I thought, hmmm...IDK.  She never said her name...she just introduced herself to us as Nurse Goodbody.

So I start the search. 

After searching for Nurse Goodbody on google, I have found that the real Nurse Goodbody is actually Gunilla Hunton who was on the show from '69 till '97. Here is Gunilla now.

We met Wendy Lynn Adams. Here is the link to her and her husband's website.

I emailed a hee-haw expert that I found while searching, to ask her. She responded that Gunilla was the only Nurse Goodbody.  Hee Haw's 1st episode was in June of 1969. Gunilla first appeared in episode 13, in December of '69. I checked the IMDB website, and there is no Wendy Lynn listed in any of the first 12 epiodes.


Ms. Adams' website says she was inducted into the Celebrity Hall of Fame in 1998. There is no such thing as a Celebrity Hall of Fame. 

I found only one other reference to this Wendy Adams as Nurse Goodbody on this site where it says that she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1998. But there were only four 1998 inductees. Two of them included Tammy Wynette and Elvis Presley. And I'm pretty sure we did not meet Tammy Wynette on Sunday.

This site also gave a quote where Wendy claimed to be Elvis' "prayer partner".  Um, ok.  I'll give her that one.

I have honestly spent hours on this.  I can compare the feelings on this to when I found out there wasn't a Santa Claus, and when I found out Delilah was not in Memphis, but a syndicated show out of California.  (I'm still not over that one)

What I can't get over, is that she visited my home church several times during that week, introducing herself as Nurse Goodbody.  So this wasn't a one-time introduction, or encounter with her at Graceland.  She made this statement to a lot of people. 

Maybe she was a stand-in?  Maybe she was a back-up singer?  IDK.

I know our Hee-Haw bubble was busted.  Corey and I feel a little bit of anger for falling for it.  Why would she let us go on and on, seeing how excited we were?

I'm sure she is a very nice lady.  And it seems that she does a lot of work with the homeless in her hometown in California. 

But gloom, despair and agony on us.  We met another, and PHFFFT, she is gone!