Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in black and white
It was June 2, 1953. My family did not have a TV and my mother very much wanted to see the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, and so we drove to the home of my first-grade teacher on the outskirts of Paducah, Kentucky. She taught me to read, and she and my mother taught at the same school and were friends and she had a TV. Her son and I went out to a creek in the woods that had a vine hanging over it, and here’s what could happen if you got it right.
You could run really hard off a high bank with the vine in your hands, swing over the creek and swing back, if lucky, landing on your feet. That was true adventure at the age of 7, although I did catch a snatch of the TV show that my mother talked about all the way home. She was an Anglophile and I grew up keeping an eye on the queen. I have never been all that big on the idea of monarchy and thought a revolution justified in getting King George III out of the American way. But I have long treasured this queen and am very sorry to learn of her death at 96.
It wasn’t just my mother’s fondness that did it, but keeping up with news that I later reported on myself, if not on the queen. Over and over her character was there, forever fortifying the U.K. and Western civilization. She forever showed bravery, virtuosity, optimism, dutifulness, insight, prudence, endurance, wisdom and proper, engaging personal behavior with a perpetual smile and lots of jokes in private, it's said. She was also deeply religious.
She and Winston Churchill appreciated each other, and she got along splendidly with many U.S. presidents as part of strengthening the British-U.S. alliance that was crucial to Western survival over the last century and this century as we shared so many principles.
Queen Elizabeth’s knowledge was as immense as her influence, I have read, but she did not engage in public or even personal argumentation. Instead, she calmly offered advice in private meetings always listening to counter ideas. She made a difference both practically and symbolically. She was a devoted lover of the U.K., its people and the honorable standards they stood for, and she wanted glad tidings for the rest of the world.
She made maybe as many mistakes in seven decades as I make in a week or two. Her own family found ways to let her down, but she never let her own responsibilities down, never retreated from what she alone could do, worked endlessly and hard and, while never showing off, she always demonstrated character of the kind we all should hope for.
She actually served in the military as a mechanic in World War II, made an incredibly funny film having lunch with Paddington Bear and has reminded us Americans that so much of what we are came from England.
I am so glad I had a chance to swing on a vine that did not break and see the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service.
