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Well, it was the queen of England, by George.
OK, so that’s not a very good pun,
if it is a pun at all. But how can you resist when the subject is an old picture
that might show the queen of England riding with King George.
We published it the day after the
queen, now the queen mother, turned 100, but not because it was her birthday.
We got hold of it because Rowan
native Ruth Graham Cook of Clemmons was in Rowan researching family genealogy.
She had the picture, a small
snapshot she’d found in her family’s belongings, and wondered if someone in
the family took it during a parade in Salisbury back in the ’30s. Would we
like to use it in the Yesterday series that runs on the editorial page on
Saturdays?
We’re always interested in
Yesterday pictures, but this one didn’t look like it was made here. It showed
several people in an open touring car, with two men standing on the back. A
woman in the back seat was wearing a broad-brimmed hat and holding a white
parasol over her head.
Salisbury didn’t have any
buildings like those in the picture, so it couldn’t have been made here, but
suddenly Nancy Fisher, our Post librarian, who was staring at it through a
high-powered magnifying glass, announced, “That’s the queen of England! With
the king! I know it is, because my mother used to look like her!”
Who were Ruth and I to argue? Our
mothers didn’t look like the queen of England back in the ’30s.
So we went back to a story about how
Ruth got into genealogy — and used the picture with her story. Maybe someone
could throw some light — pro or con — on Nancy’s identification.
And someone did. In fact, four
someones, which in this business is a little like hitting the jackpot.
Doris Brownlee called as soon as the
paper came out.
She and her husband, the late Dick
Brownlee, were living in Baltimore in 1939, the year the World’s Fair was in
New York City.
“And my mother, father and my
three younger sisters drove all the way from Pueblo, Colo.,” she says, to
visit them and go to the World’s Fair. But first, “they picked me up, and we
spent two days sightseeing in Washington. It was just a happenstance that we saw
the parade.”
But there was no happenstance to
knowing who was in that big car.
When it went by, she says, “I said
to myself, ‘Well, that’s the king and queen of England!’ and we did drive
up to New York City, and we saw the parade again.”
And the king and queen again. The
queen was wearing the same hat or another one just like it.
“She always wore a hat like that,”
Doris said.
As soon as Doris saw the picture in
the paper, she got her magnifying glass out, too.
“I would have recognized the king,”
she says, “because of his profile. Ruth’s picture brought back great
memories to me. I was so happy that Nancy recognized them. It amazed me so —
61 years ago, to remember and recognize something like that .... ”
The next day I got an e-mail from
Doris’ daughter, Ann.
“I’m not sure, what with the
edge of the window in the middle of his face,” she wrote, “but I think that
may be FDR on the passenger side of the front seat.”
Well, yes.
Millie Lentz called the same day and
said it was.
She was 9-year-old Millie Miller
then, and she and her parents went to New York to the World’s Fair. They didn’t
see the king and queen there.
“But on the way back,” she says,
“we stopped in Washington at what they called a tourist home in those days,
and as we started to leave, the lady who ran the tourist home said, ‘You can’t
leave now. The king and queen of England are coming by.’ ”
So they waited, and Millie will
never forget it.
“She had on this powder blue
dress, and her hat was covered with blue feathers. The breeze just made them
float around, and FDR was in the front.
“I don’t know what street we
were on, but there were people everywhere and they were smiling and excited. It
left an impression on me.”
And the next day, another e-mail
from Jean Troutman certainly settled any further questions.
“That picture was of King George
VI and Queen Elizabeth, who is now the queen mother,” she wrote.
Jean was born in Northern Ireland,
and her neighbor, Beth Murph, who is of British descent, still has a letter
written to her parents in June 1939 by her grandfather, who was then living in
Quebec. In it he writes about the royal couple’s North American tour, which
included a visit to the World’s Fair in New York and a visit with President
Roosevelt in Washington.
And I stay astounded that here in
Rowan County, 61 years later, that many people can say, “Oh, yes, I remember
when ... ”
After, of course, Nancy Fisher’s
sleuthing instinct pointed the way.
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Rose Post