It’s strange to be so sad because I hardly knew her... but she changed my life
Girl who welcomed Queen to Ireland remembers her as a ‘nice and friendly lady’
THE first citizen to greet Queen Elizabeth on Irish soil during her first State visit has recalled how, as a girl of just seven, the monarch was a ‘nice, friendly’ lady who smelled like her granny.
Rachel Fox was chosen to present the Queen with flowers on her arrival here in May 2011 and has very warm memories of the day and the impact it had on her.
‘I remember getting into a blacked out car in the morning,’ she told the Irish Mail on Sunday yesterday. ‘I knew what was going on but I was only seven so I didn’t really realise the importance of the event. I was just excited to wear a dress and get all dressed up.’
Rachel had been chosen by her principal at St Anne’s National School, Shankill, Dublin, at the request of local resident Eamon Gilmore, who was minister for foreign affairs at the time.
‘I was never formally told why I was chosen,’ she said, though remembers her principal telling her ‘good things come in small packages’.
‘I got assigned a personal assistant for the day, which is an interesting thing for a seven-year-old to have. I just thought she was my new friend. She held my coat and held my hand before the Queen arrived.’
After a visit to Garda HQ in the Phoenix Park, Rachel and her parents were whisked off again to Baldonnel Airport where she met members of the Defence Forces.
A diary gifted to her on the day, which she filled in, helps jog her memory of the occasion.
‘One of the female soldiers saw that I was nervous and gave me a chocolate bar – I had that written down in the diary,’ she said.
‘Her perfume reminded me of my granny’
‘I remember them telling me, “Just don’t drop the flowers”.
‘I was given my name tag and it said “Rachel Fox – flower presenter”. I felt very important. I’d been briefed not to freak out if there were people shouting my name, but that didn’t happen.’
Rachel was accompanied outside with her PA, Jane, as the Queen touched down, her parents had to watch on TV inside the airport, such was the level of security.
‘When the soldiers were all lined up against the red carpet, one of the medals fell off, and they couldn’t do anything about it because the Queen had just arrived.
‘I remember she got out of the plane and I was kind of confused because the soldiers were doing their formal calls and I was kind of taken aback and in awe.
‘[Prince] Philip was behind her but I was just kind of fixated on this figurehead that was coming towards me. Everyone seemed to be in awe of her. But she was so polite and you wouldn’t know she was of such importance the way she carried herself. She was just a person getting off a plane.
‘I remember the smell of her perfume. I remember talking about that afterwards. It was a sweet, flowery smell. I think it reminded me of my granny.’
Rachel said the Queen’s entire demeanour reminded her of her granny.
‘She was really nice and friendly and she came up to me and she was like, “Wow, those are really lovely flowers, thank you so much”. All through the day it was like, not clinical, but very procedural – in the taxi and meeting people and stuff – whereas here I could just kind of relax. It was familiarity, kind of.
‘And then my line was “Welcome to Ireland, your majesty”. Then she took them off me and said, “Thank you for the lovely flowers”.
‘My mum said she could see the Queen’s face just relax when she saw me, because I was a child.’
Later that day, Rachel was ‘sitting there eating chips or something’ in The Queen’s Bar in Dalkey.
‘I was on TV at the same time and people were coming up to me saying, “Oh my god, you’re on TV”. I thought it was the best thing ever.
‘It was a surreal day and when I came back to school there were pictures of me on the wall, and people were coming up to me in the playground asking to be my personal security guard.’
Rachel, now 19, said the occasion had a lasting and positive impact on her. She said: ‘I was quite shy in primary school. I was quite an introvert. And something like that improves your confidence as a whole, when you have people that are genuinely interested in something you’ve done.
‘I feel like it made me develop more quickly as a child because I was talking to all these adults and I was on a radio show. It gave me more confidence.’
Rachel says she still gets recognised for her part in the day.
‘I started a job over the summer and a girl that had just started was a year above me in primary school and she remembered my name and remembered me as the girl who met the Queen.
‘People still are coming up to me like, “You’re Rachel Fox from St Anne’s, you’re the one who met the Queen”.’
The UCD chemical engineering student said she ‘nearly didn’t believe it’ when the news of the
Queen’s death broke on Thursday.
She said: ‘She’s one of those figures you think will always be there. I actually did feel sad, even though I didn’t know her and had no connection to her. But because I met her, it nearly became part of my identity. And when she died, I didn’t know what to do with myself because you can’t get upset about
someone you don’t know, but it’s like now it’s a part of me – it’s a major part of what happened when I was a child.
‘It’s kind of amazing. It’s part of Irish history and I just happened to give flowers to her. I’m really lucky to have had that opportunity to meet her and really grateful.’