Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II is still fresh

A couple of days ago, Maxwell Toth of Manchester emailed to ask if I remember the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, to which I replied, swiftly, that I most certainly do.

Max, one of my nine grandsons, is a student at Manchester High, and U.S. history is one of his favorite subjects. I’m that way too, and it always pleases me when he asks me to probe my past for grandfatherly memories of various events, from earth-shakers to obscure family things.

King George VI died in February of 1952 when I was a senior at Torrington High. Elizabeth, only 25, immediately ascended to the throne and became queen of the United Kingdom. She and Prince Philip were in East Africa, beginning a good will tour when the sad news came. They immediately returned to England. The Queen’s coronation took place more than a year later on June 2, 1953. I had graduated from Torrington High in June of ‘52 and been inducted into the U.S. Air Force two weeks later.

Max often asks about his grandmother, Ethel, my little Canadian rose, who died at age 55 some 29 years ago. Neither Max nor his sister Jenna, a university sophomore, ever knew Ethel. Only two of the 17 grandchildren, Samuel and Owen IV, had arrived before she died in 1988. Neither was yet one year old.

Ethel grew up on a “farm school’’ called Fairbridge Farm, for homeless English kids established by the Prince of Wales on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. I’m sure Max knows about this part of her past, but I’m betting he did not know his grandmother loved and admired Elizabeth. When Ethel was a resident of Fairbridge Farm, the queen, then a princess, visited the school while on a tour of Canada. Ethel, and all the kids in residence, got to have a meal in their dining hall with Elizabeth. It made an exciting memory which endured the rest of her life, for Ethel.

While she almost never spoke of her years at Fairbridge, Max’s grandmother became enthusiastic when telling me, or her children, about that visit. All these years later, I can hear her revisiting that day, always emphasizing Elizabeth’s physical beauty, her grace and poise and how kind she was to the children.

Background: Ethel Riley’s mother and father (a retired coal hewer) were separated and her little-girl life was very hard. Finally, her father, who loved her, took her to a place called Middlemore in Birmingham. It was a home for children from similar circumstances. At age 6, she was shipped with 30 other children on a ship called the Dutchess of Bedford across the Atlantic to Montreal. From there a train took the little band of adventurers across the broad continent to Vancouver. Most of them stayed at Fairbridge for 10 or 11 years.

The girls learned to be domestics, the boys were trained as farmers and all were schooled at the farm school buildings.

Max’s grandma was 16 when she went to live and work for Jack and Joan Burgess, who operated a clothing store in Victoria. They were very good to her and became her legal guardians. Ethel, in turn, worked tirelessly for them.

She also worked in the office at Royal Jubilee Hospital and finished her high school education graduating from Victoria High. At home, she was charged with taking care of the two Burgess children.

There’s so much more to Ethel’s story. She was not a queen, but she was our queen — and she left a rich legacy to me, her children and grandchildren that can’t be measured in gold, but only in love and everything that is good.