I was able to get a headless Android patch that almost removes all the UI elements from running. The com.android.systemui is still hanging around (and taking up 14MB of memory). It reminds me of the ghost in the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling - Nearly Headless Nick whose head is almost chopped off, but not quite.
My next effort will be to see if I can completely remove the com.android.systemui from running.
For those interested, I posted my patch to the patches page.
