Breathless Admirers Wait, Wave and Chat With Queen and Duke
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
There is the queen you hear and read about, and then there is the actual queen, standing in front of you in three dimensions, close enough to touch.
When it happened yesterday morning in Greenbelt -- when the queen strolled 100 yards from Goddard Space Flight Center's main building to one housing the auditorium -- the Goddard employees and their family members lining the route seemed star-struck, their mouths hanging open in awe as she passed within feet.
Accompanied by NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin and British and U.S. officials, Her Majesty walked past at least 3,000 onlookers cheering and waving small British flags. They could have reached out and touched her as she strolled past, but she did not offer a hand, just smiled the queenly smile and nodded.
She stopped to chat here and there on the 15-minute stroll.
"She asked me do I work here and what I do here," said John Krizmanic, who has a doctorate in physics. Standing with the others behind a metal fence, Krizmanic was smiling so wide, it was hard to tell whether he'd just spoken with a queen or finally unlocked the secret of the universe. " 'I'm a physicist,' I told her."
Sherry Warner was still quivering minutes afterward. "I told her, 'Yes, I work here,' that we actually build the electronics that go in satellites," Warner said. "Oh, yes, I'm excited! Wonderful! Wonderful!"
The royal visit began with a stop at mission control, where the queen listened as British-born NASA astronaut C. Michael Foale posed questions about life in space to the three astronauts orbiting Earth aboard the international space station. "Very fascinating," the queen proclaimed afterward. At her discretion, she did not speak to them herself.
At the auditorium, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) and Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) presented the queen with a framed montage of images taken from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Accompanied by Prince Philip, the queen toured an exhibit area. The duke listened intently as British astronaut Piers Sellers, who walked in space last summer, described a spacesuit's life-support system.
"What do you do about natural functions?" the duke inquired. The astronaut gave a discreet answer.
Throughout the morning, patience was rewarded. Preschoolers, children of Goddard employees, waited for the queen while sitting on the grass, talking, laughing and glancing around. "Where's the queen at?" a small boy yelled. Coming soon, he was told. And when finally she arrived, he got to his feet like the others but said nothing -- just handed the queen a flower, staring up at her wide-eyed, his face frozen.
-- Paul Duggan and Steve Vogel
At Children's Hospital, all was sparkling and ready for the queen's visit yesterday afternoon. Nurses with cellphone cameras crowded roped-off corridors, waiting for a photo op. Patients in the atrium decorated cookies in the shape of crowns and ( yes!) a frog prince.
Upstairs on the cardiac ward, visitors Claire and Audrey Lyhus, who had been frantically practicing curtsies, switched to a modest head bob, their mother having decreed that more suitable for all-American girls from Rockville, ages 7 and 9. "Just bow your head and say, 'My name is Claire,' " instructed Janet Lyhus, a school counselor.
Then came the magic moment: Her Majesty arrived. She walked right into the playroom, looking smaller than imagined. She was trailed by a smiling first lady Laura Bush.
After an official greeting from hospital doctors, the queen caught sight of the Lyhus sisters' blond little brother, Evan, 1, who is being treated for a heart defect.
How long has he been a patient? she asked his dad, Bret. He told her Evan been doing well since his first surgery: "He's got lots of energy."
"Yes, he's jolly," she pronounced with a slight smile.
The 81-year-old queen looked in good spirits herself, more cheerful than one might expect at the end of a state visit that included stops in three states and the District.
"Next, she's going to go to the World War II Memorial," Laura Bush told bystanders. "I'm going to go and take a nap!"
After the playroom, the queen breezed through the atrium, filled with doctors, patients and the mayor on the first floor. In lieu of "Rule Britannia," she was serenaded with Charlie Brown's theme song. Above, children on upper floors crowded the windows to get a look. The queen looked up, smiled and waved.
Former patient Matthew Morgan, 12, of Potomac told the queen privately how last year he'd been in a coma for two weeks after a skateboarding accident.
"She said, 'Well, you're very lucky,' " he said. "I was just trying to stay cool."
Then the duke of Edinburgh appeared, having spent much of the past hour listening intently to a presentation by two neuroscientists about research on Down syndrome and autism. He was shown a movie of a neuron making its way through the brain of a tiny mouse fetus.
Prince Philip asked penetrating questions, the neuroscientists said, quizzing them about what life stage doctors hope to intercede with future treatments.
"I didn't know what to expect. I'd never met a duke before," said neuroscientist Joshua Corbin. "But he was actually quite fun to talk to."
Before the royals departed for their next event, the duke stopped to speak to Sharelle Langaigne, 14, a Pasadena resident who has been hospitalized since March with an infected hip fracture.
"He asked me if I pushed my wheelchair myself or if had a motor on it," she said afterward. "I said I pushed it myself, and he said if he ever saw me coming, he'd get out of the way."
"They were so natural and simple, not stuck up at all," concluded her mother, Mercia. "They made us feel comfortable."
-- Annie Gowen and Neely Tucker
Betty Yendell was wearing her old, brown British Army service cap and carrying her heavy wool battle jacket with the "Defense of London" patch on the sleeve, in the hopes that the queen might notice.
You never knew.
Sure, the queen's stop at the National World War II Memorial on the Mall came at the end of the day, and she would be with Prince Philip and former president George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, and other World War II veterans.
But it was May 8 -- V-E Day -- that never-to-be-forgotten day that marked the end of the war in Europe. And Yendell, 86, of Twin Brook, and Elizabeth II had once been comrades of sorts.
During the war, Yendell said, she had been in the Auxiliary Territorial Service and had helped run one of Britain's deadly 3.7-inch antiaircraft guns, which hurled 28-pound shells at Luftwaffe bombers over London.
The queen, then 19, had also been in the ATS, as Second Subaltern Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor. She had trained in auto mechanics, but she had also been Princess Elizabeth and had appeared with her family on a balcony of Buckingham Palace to the delirious crowds 62 years ago yesterday.
So much time had passed.
Yendell, later stationed in Belgium, had met a GI there, got married, moved to the United States and brought up four children. Her husband, Charles, died in 1989.
Elizabeth had become the queen of England.
Yendell, with her jacket and cane, had a good seat right in the front of the veterans contingent yesterday. Her cap bore the gold ATS badge. And it was a gorgeous day beneath a bright blue sky.
Elizabeth might well notice.
At 3:30 p.m., a British military officer announced: "The queen will be along shortly."
Ten minutes later, Her Majesty arrived at the Pacific Arch on the south side of the memorial.
The queen and her husband placed a wreath of artificial red poppies on the east rim of the memorial's central fountain. The wreath was inscribed: "In Memory of the Glorious Dead."
The royal couple then stood at attention and together bowed. As a bugler began taps, the veterans rose and saluted. It was quiet, except for the bugle and rushing of the water in the fountain.
The queen was given a quick tour of the memorial and then began moving along the line of veterans, chatting and saying hello. People were excited and taking lots of pictures, and by the time the queen got to Yendell, the monarch was moving too briskly.
There was no chance to show the old wool battle jacket, no chance to notice the cap or say a word about the war.
"She just went right by," Yendell said afterward. "Right by."
-- Michael E. Ruane
Hours before the queen ended her visit, it was time for her to give President Bush a sly payback. On Monday, he had made a faux pas, suggesting while welcoming her that she had been a witness to American independence in 1776. At a dinner at the British ambassador's residence last night, she wondered aloud whether she should start her toast by saying, "When I was here in 1776. . . . " Elizabeth ruled, and mirth and laughter reigned.
-- Martin Weil
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