From the Vault: MY Brush with Royalty - The Kenner Star 1997

    The death of Princess Diana has spawned a sea of ink and a mountain of print, and so I guess it’s my obligation, as a “journalist,” to add to the volumes that have already been written about “the people’s princess.”  I realize that by the time you get to see this you may have had your fill of “Candle in the Wind.” 

    Actually, only the first part of this story is about Diana. The second part is about a relative of her ex-husband, Charles.
    When my wife and I were visiting England, during the time that we all thought the Royal Marriage was a happy one, we had planned a side trip to Ireland. Then my wife, Norma, a huge Diana-fan, noticed in the paper that Her Royal Highness was to appear later in the week at an ice show starring British Olympic champs Torvill and Dean. So, this meant we had to rush over to Ireland, tear around the Emerald Isle in a rented car and get back in time for the ice show. After all, how often do you get a chance to lay naked eyes on Diana?  Up ’till now all we had were TV and newspaper images  of her.
    And so our plan unfolded.  We rushed through a 3 day tour of southern Ireland, got our snapshots, our beds and our breakfasts, our Medieval feast at an Irish castle, and sped back to England just in time to make the Royal appearance. 
    We arrived in our seats and immediately began searching the huge crowd with binoculars  for Princess Di.  Finally I spotted her.
    “There she is, Norma. Way the hell over there!”  Norma’s anticipatory expression  sank as she realized the only  good peek we were going to get of Diana was through the binoculars. The naked eye could only see a tiny blonde speck on the other side of the auditorium. 
    We suffered through the ice show, starring Torvill and what’s his name, and at half-time, a red carpet was rolled on the ice and Princes Diana, looking lovely through the binoculars, stepped onto the ice-floor and handed out some sort of prizes to the skaters.  We have it all on 35 millimeter film. She looks like Mars moving closer to Saturn, since we had no telephoto lens.
    We had saved our memory, however tiny.   
    As I look at the photo now in the bookcase, I notice another memento sitting next to it. It’s a Royal purple box, inside of which are two clothing brushes. On the cover of the cardboard box is some writing commemorating the 1970 appearance of “His  Royal Highness” the Duke of Windsor at the headquarters of the Fuller Brush Company in Hartford, Connecticut. And I was there.
    I had known something of the history of the Duke.  He became King of England, (Edward VIII), in January of 1936.  By December he was no longer King. He abdicated in order to marry “the woman I love,” Wallis Warfield Simpson. It was all very scandalous in those days.  The king was planning to marry a twice divorced woman. And to top it off, she was an American!  Upon his abdication, the throne was taken over by his brother, George VI.  George and his wife, Elizabeth, had two children, one of whom was to become Elizabeth II.  Among her children was Prince Charles, who married Diana. Hence, the Royal relativity. 
    The Duke of Windsor ( as he was now known), and Wallis spent most of their time in France, with a four year stint in the Bahamas.
    The Duke had apparently been befriended by the owner of the Fuller Brush Company, who invited him to the unveiling of a statue at the company in Hartford. (The Duke, by the way, was prone to  being befriended by anyone who wanted a little publicity).
    Toting my little tape recorder,  ( I was a reporter for a Hartford radio station), I went up to the Duke, introduced myself  and  shook his hand.  Hoping to start off an exclusive “scoop” interview, I asked him something sophomoric  about how he liked not being a king anymore. The Duke smiled, and then ( in what I thought was an unbelievably exaggerated British accent), uttered these momentous words into my microphone: “When I was Governor of the BaHAYmas, the natives there had a saying- ‘Keep mouth shut, catch no flies.’ ”  He then smiled again, and walked toward the dining area.  
     We then all proceeded to have “lunch with the Duke of Windsor.”  The ironic part of the whole thing is that while I, indeed, could say I lunched with the Duke, the luncheon was held in a place a big as   an airplane hangar.  I could see the Duke having lunch, but to see him well, I would have had to use binoculars stronger than the ones I used to see Princess Diana.