From Coronation to Jubilee

A personal account.

Memory is a funny thing. We remember what we remember and we may think we remember things we could not have because we weren’t present. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe someone told of a thing so often we make it ours. It’s collective, ever present and the older I get the more things blur. It’s a pretty blur mostly.

Let me say at this point the Queen and I have never spoken or met. We have no connection. But I have an attachment to her and it began at her coronation. The one I couldn’t have attended.

After taking her oath and becoming Queen shortly after her father King George VI ‘s passing in February of 1952, the Coronation as we know it was a year later to allow for a years mourning and planning as well. It was the twenty five year olds wish that the pomp would be televised and so it was, becoming the first major event to be televised around the world. Which is where I don’t come in.

A photo of a 1953 tv. One style of many available, at the time.

We’re used to all sorts of technology now, but, in 1953, getting the televised coronation was literally a first, having the films flown into Canada and dispatched to tv stations and down into the US through Buffalo. Both black and white as well as color were filmed and there was a delay of about 24 hours as the Canadian Royal Air Force and others literally raced to deliver the reels. People bought or rented tv’s wanting to see the festivities rather than just hear as the tv become “the” medium surpassing radio. It was nothing short of groundbreaking.

The US networks broadcast - now the memory that is not mine comes to play: The coronation at an impossible time of day. Middle of night, early morning in black and white and it was spectacular. The Queen waved from her carriage and waved and the crown and she waved. Crown. Wave.

So, I can’t seem to find the specifics easily and I’m not googling too much as I want to keep my faulty recollection. It is mine. Well, mine, now. I could not see the event because I was sort of here but not born till August and I “remember” through older siblings. How they would go on and the story always ended with, “but you don’t remember because you weren’t born yet”. And yet, I do, because of the big splash and the nature of the world seems to recycle beautiful celebrations till their natural ebb and now here we are at the Platinum Jubilee Celebration, seventy years from her initial oath on June 2, 1952.

Elizabeth, the Queen is pictured above on her birthday in 2021 with her Fell Ponies who were a gift.

Sixty nine years later, major networks in a real simultaneous broadcast, sent out a week of fireworks, parades and more. Although the Queen was not feeling strong enough to attend most of the festivities, she came to the balcony several times and smiled and waved. For all the years I have seen the Queen, I never saw her smile publicly with more abandon. We approve.