It’s a good thing Elvis was in the building.
Elvis, in this case, is Joe Creazzo, a plumber and grandfather from Palmer Township who expresses his lifelong love of “The King” as an impersonator. Maybe you’ve seen him onstage at the State Theatre, roaming Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem or popping into Dunkin’ Donuts between plumbing jobs.
On a Monday morning last month at the Palmer Park Mall, he was just Joe Creazzo, chatting with friends and retirees who gather there to talk sports, doctor appointments and what have you.
Suddenly, an older couple who walk the mall for fitness were in the throes of an emergency.
“I looked over and the man was slapping his wife in the face, saying, ‘Wake up, wake up, wake up,'” Creazzo said.
Joe Creazzo, 74, at home in Palmer Township Jan. 27, 2017, talks about a drawing an artist had done of him as Elvis. He said he’s been impersonating him for decades and won multiple first prizes in contests. On a morning a few weeks prior, at the Palmer Park Mall, he’d helped resuscitate a woman suffering an attack. (Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com)
They were on a bench, maybe 15 to 20 yards away, and Creazzo ran over. He wet a finger in his mouth and held it under her nostrils to see if she was breathing. She didn’t seem to be.
Creazzo hooked a finger into her mouth to make sure nothing was blocking her airway then began rescue breathing.
“It seemed like forever. It was maybe 20 seconds.”
After about the fourth breath, he could see her eyes start to flutter and he switched to compressions on her back, not CPR, but more like pushing to help her lungs. She vomited and came around, and an ambulance came and took her to the hospital.
She was back walking at the mall with her husband within days.
Mysterious attack
“They could never figure out what was wrong with her,” said the husband, who asked that he and his wife remain anonymous because she is embarrassed by the ordeal. “I mean, she had more tests than you can think of and they still have no reason for it.”
The couple, who live in Palmer Township, walk at the mall six days a week, year-round. The husband doesn’t remember much of what happened that morning.
“From what they told me, this guy came over and offered to help,” he said of Creazzo. “I don’t know much. I was so excitable.”
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Bob Giordano, a member of Creazzo’s mall klatch for about a year now, saw it all unfold.
“This woman, she was there and she went down and Joseph got up and he gave her resuscitation,” said Giordano, who is 77 and lives above the Firehouse Billiards pool hall he manages at 1600 Sullivan Trail in Forks Township. “And he helped. He brought her back.
“I thought it was pretty amazing what he did. I wouldn’t know what to do. I just sat there, but he just jumped in to help.”
Creazzo figures his U.S. Army first-aid training came back to him. The 1961 graduate of Easton High School — he played football all four years, including on the 1958 undefeated team — served in 1963 and ’64, he said.
“It’s like a reaction,” he said, recalling what he was taught: “They brainwash you so you’re all one unit. ‘You’ve got my back. I’ve got your back.’ That’s the greatest trust. It’s just something that overcomes you.”
“I looked over and the man was slapping his wife in the face, saying, ‘Wake up, wake up, wake up,'” said Joe Creazzo, 74, of Palmer Township, of a couple in the throes of a medical emergency recently at Palmer Park Mall. An Elvis impersonator, here he holds a photo album Jan. 27, 2017, at home from his years celebrating “The King.” (Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com)
Creazzo, who is 74, is coming off a difficult time in his life, following his wife Darlene’s battle with breast cancer. She needed surgery and had to undergo chemotherapy for five hours every Tuesday for a period of 2016.
“Thank God on Christmas she took her last one, her last treatment,” Creazzo said. “Thank God everything was good, the whole cancer was gone, and now she’s not taking any chemo so she’s on her way to getting better now. That was my Christmas present from the lord, a very great one.”
Joe and Darlene raised two daughters, and now have a 2-year-old grandson, also named Joseph.
Celebrating ‘The King’
Looking back, Elvis Presley has been a constant in Creazzo’s life since he first saw him on the “Ed Sullivan Show.” He started impersonating Elvis in 1957 or ’58, he said, and has taken first prizes in competitions from the State Theatre in Easton, to onboard cruise ships to Graceland.
“It’s going on 20 years and I’ll be there again at the Elvis bash,” scheduled April 15 at the State.
He even took voice lessons, starting off by singing “Hound Dog” for his instructor.
“After we were done, she says, ‘Joe, you have a very, very nice voice but you can’t sing,'” Creazzo said. He would learn breath-control, tone and range.
“And just remember, don’t scream,” he recalled being told. “And whether you have 10,000 or 1,000 or just … you’re singing to just one person, and let it be.”
Creazzo got to see Presley once in concert, on Valentine’s Day in 1971 in Las Vegas. He was struck by the singer’s generosity, scrapping the front-row seats so a group of wheelchair-bound youth could get up front for the show.
He was the consummate entertainer, Creazzo said in his basement adorned with Elvis memorabilia and the karaoke machine where he keeps up his chops.
“There’ll never be another one,” he said. “One in a lifetime. You’ll never see a guy that could sing in any voice, any pitch, any tone; was a good man, gave his heart out, would give you the shirt off his back.”
Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
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