GoElvis.com,

It was his voice that first touched her soul.

She was 11 years old. She didn’t speak English, but she heard something in his voice over the radio waves in Argentina that touched her.

Something wild.

She hunted for pictures of him and finally found an American movie magazine with stories about him. She had no idea what the stories said. But she saw something in his face, something in his smile that touched her.

Something beautiful.

She made up her mind to learn English and she did. When she was 17, she wrote a fan letter to the pen pals section of an American movie magazine. A girl in Wisconsin wrote to her. They agreed. There was something about Elvis Presley.

Something joyful.

“Elvis sang, `He touched me. The hand of Jesus touched me and now I am no longer the same. He touched me and what wonderful joy that floods my soul,’” Ester Alicia Blajer, 57, an Elvis fan since age 11, wrote in an E-mail from Buenos Aires.

“I don’t mean to be sacrilegious, but isn’t that what Elvis did? He touched us and we were no longer the same. Elvis touched us and what wonderful joy flooded our souls.”

What is it about Elvis, anyway?

Why do tens of thousands of people from around the world still troop through his home and trudge past his grave every year on the anniversary of his death?

Why do millions of people still feel some sort of deeply personal, eerily spiritual connection to a rock and roll singer who died a broken man a quarter-century ago?

There seem to be as many explanations as there are experts.

“He (Elvis) allowed people to think their impulses were acceptable. … That’s what Jesus did. He took our guilt away,” Richard Maddock, a consumer psychologist who conducted a marketing study for Graceland, told me in 1996.

“It could be that Elvis’s draw is purely secular … a route to a type of secular redemption, not from sin but just from everyday life,” Teri Mason, a behavioral sciences professor who spent two years studying Elvis fans, told me in 2001.

“Elvis was not only a sex symbol. He also inspired tenderness. You wanted to protect him, to love him tenderly,” Ester wrote to me Thursday.

Ester wanted to be in Memphis today, the 25th anniversary of the death of Elvis.

She wanted to be with Sandy, the girl in Wisconsin who became Ester’s pen pal in August 1962, and who now is her lifelong friend and adopted sister in Elvis.

She wanted to participate in the candlelight vigil at Graceland and lay a flower on the grave of a man she never met who changed her life.

Ester’s love of Elvis not only inspired her to learn English. In college, she earned a degree in language and became a Certified Public Translator.

“Being bilingual opened many doors to me. I was able to find better jobs and get higher salaries. This allowed me to see the world,” Ester wrote.

Ester visited Graceland in 1987, 1993 and 1997. She and Sandy were planning to be here together this week, but Ester couldn’t afford to make the trip.

She lost her job in 1999, the year Argentina’s economy began to collapse. Once Latin America’s richest nation, Argentina is becoming its poorest.

“I am going through very difficult times now, but as usual, Elvis is helping me,” Ester wrote.

“I try to listen to his records, watch his videos, read the books about him, and I can’t stop thinking that Elvis has been my inspiration since I was a teenager, and is now opening new doors for me.”

A few weeks ago, Ester joined a gospel choir, the Kingdom Gospel Singers. They will perform their own Elvis tribute Saturday at an event organized by the Elvis Presley Fan Club of Argentina.

“I love Elvis and will love him till the day I die,” Ester wrote.

“And when that day comes, I want my friends to play Elvis gospel music.”

After all, it was his voice that first touched her soul.

Contact columnist David Waters at 529-2399 or E-mail waters@gomemphis.com. Faith Matters runs on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.