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The Queen Mum
Compiled from Times wires LONDON -- The news, when it came, was hardly unexpected. After all, Queen Mother Elizabeth was 101 years old and had been in precariously frail health for months. But the announcement of her death Saturday afternoon (March 30, 2002) by a spokesman for Buckingham Palace was a shock nonetheless to a nation accustomed to the queen mother's enduring presence, decade after decade, through good times and bad. If in recent years she had of necessity limited her public life, the queen mother still had an important role in the country's psyche, as one of its last great links to the past. Her death, the palace said, was brought on in the end by the bad cold and chest infection she suffered over Christmas and never recovered from. But age surely had much to do with it, as did the death last month of her younger daughter, Princess Margaret. Queen Elizabeth II was at her mother's side when she died. The queen mother had been rarely seen in recent months because of her failing health. Drawn by the sight of the Union Jack being lowered to half-staff atop Buckingham Palace -- a custom signifying the death of a member of the royal family that was begun after the 1997 death of Diana, Princess of Wales -- crowds gathered there and at Windsor Castle, where the queen mother died. She was best known to younger generations as the mother of Queen Elizabeth II and grandmother of Prince Charles. Remarkably sprightly despite her age, the queen mother was a fixture at royal occasions, delighting in mixing with the public and greeting people who flocked to meet her. But those who were young when German bombs rained down on London in 1940 remembered her as the queen who endured the blitz with them and visited their shattered homes. One member of the crowd at Buckingham Palace, Patricia Mumford, 49, of Bolton, England, said that behind the queen mother's invariably cheerful persona lay a lifetime of service to Britain that older people, especially, would never forget. "In later years she was regarded with a lot of affection, almost as the nation's grandmother," Mumford said. "But I think the older generation, in particular, remember that she was quite a formidable woman during her younger years." The queen mother's body was expected to be moved to the Royal Chapel of All Saints in Windsor Great Park this morning. Funeral plans were expected to be announced today with the ceremony scheduled to take place in Westminster Abbey in London. Her favorite grandson, Prince Charles, was on a skiing vacation in Switzerland with his two sons, Princes William and Harry, and plans to return today. He said through a spokesman that he was "absolutely devastated." Tributes poured in from politicians and other public figures. Prime Minister Tony Blair said she had been a symbol of Britain's "decency and courage." He added: "During her long and extraordinary life, her grace, her sense of duty and her remarkable zest for life made her loved and admired by people of all ages and backgrounds, revered within our borders and beyond." Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said the queen mother had been "a wonderful queen and an extraordinary person." "The president and Mrs. Bush are deeply saddened by the death of the queen mother," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, who was with President Bush at his Texas ranch. Over two generations of dramatic social change and upheaval, through the abdication crisis that put her reluctant husband on the throne in 1936, the devastation of World War II and the royal family breakups of the 1990s, the queen mother emerged as a symbol of stability and modesty. On her 80th birthday, she even won praise from William Hamilton, a lawmaker who vehemently opposed the monarchy. "If there had ever been a revolution in Britain in the last 80 years, she surely would have been spared," Hamilton said. "Unlike some of her brood, she never seems to put a foot wrong." The former Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, daughter of a Scottish earl, was married in 1923 to Prince Albert, Duke of York, second son of King George V. They had two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, and lived quietly until 1936. The duke's elder brother succeeded to the throne that January as King Edward VIII, and by mid December had abdicated to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. The Duke of York took the throne as King George VI, a reluctant monarch whom many believed unsuited to the job. But the steadfastness and sympathy of the new king and his wife through the deprivation and danger of World War II cemented a bond with the nation that held the queen mother firmly in British affections for the next half-century. Elizabeth's decision to remain in London through the worst days of the blitz proved a crucial rallying point for Britons. And when Buckingham Palace was bombed, Elizabeth forever endeared herself to the nation by declaring herself in solidarity with the working-class people of London's bomb-ravaged East End. "I am almost glad we have been bombed," she said, in what became one of the war's most memorable remarks. "Now I feel I can look the East End in the face." She lived the grandest possible life in the grandest possible circumstances and never bared a fragment of her soul. But by betting at the races, shooting pool and knocking back a pint for photographers, she won immense affection from millions of Britons as the royal with the common touch: the "queen mum." The high point of her later years came as she led the nation in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of V-E Day in the summer of 1995, appearing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace as she had exactly 50 years earlier, before tens of thousands of people. Many were veterans, many weeping as her 5-foot-2-inch figure came through the huge palace doors. She suffered from arthritis but overcame much of the problem when, at age 95, she underwent a hip replacement in November 1995. She walked out of the hospital 18 days later, waving aside offers of assistance. She broke the other hip while out viewing horses on a bitter January day in 1998, and had an emergency replacement. A single controversy pursued her: She was said to be responsible for the virtual banishment from England of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, for adopting and enforcing what some considered an excessively unforgiving attitude toward the dethroned king. In the scheme of her life, however, any residual bitterness was relegated to the realm of scholars. "It is difficult to imagine someone so universally acceptable who is not insipid," satirist Auberon Waugh said of her on her 65th birthday. "There is nothing rude to say about her." -- Information from the New York Times, Associated Press and Washington Post was used in this report.
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