Are you old enough to remember where you were on 2 June 1953?
The Coronation of Elizabeth II took place at Westminster Abbey in London on that date. My family travelled to London, not to be invited into the Abbey but to watch the ceremony on my grandparent’s new television. Then later that day, or perhaps the next, I was taken to The Mall to see distant figures waving from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. I missed the street party at home.
My father had very bad seasonal allergies in the spring of 1953 and the doctor advised going further south where the pollination season was over. Our family of four drove to Florida. On June 2 we were in Jacksonville, Florida. My father took my little brother to the beach while my mother and I remained in the motel unit to listen on the radio to the Queen being crowned. My Dad said that she could get crowned without him. Later that summer we went to a drive-in movie along with my grandparents to see the ceremony on the big screen.
My father was in the RCAF and we were stationed in England in 1953. My sister and I were too young to attend the coronation so my dad stayed home with us and our mother travelled down to London to see it. She had a ticket (maybe through the Canadian government?) and was seated in a grandstand opposite Westminster Abbey. Before she left, Dad taught her how to use the movie camera, emphasizing that she should move it in the same direction as the action she was filming. Of course, she did the opposite so we had a very strange home movie of the event!
I wasn’t there (born in ’65), however, my mum was – she was telling me about it again last night – a story I always love to hear 🙂