When Queen Elizabeth met with the new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, a week ago, on September 6, I remarked to my wife how well the Queen looked, in the brief news clip, as she stepped briskly to the new PM, her hand extended. Despite the uncommon sight of Elizabeth with a cane, she looked hale and hearty.
    Two days later, when her death was announced, I was, along with millions of others, shocked. Of course, we knew she could not live forever, we knew she was already quite old and we knew she had recently been ill. Still, it was a shock. In a time when we have become inured to bad news pouring from our television sets, whether it be another horrific school shooting or the war crimes in Ukraine or the unending perfidy of the former President and his crowd, this was different, at least for me. I literally paused and, for an instant, held my breath.
    The Queen is dead.
    I have never been a citizen of the United Kingdom. I am the grandson of immigrants, all of whom came from what is now Ukraine. I have never owed, or even felt I owed, allegiance to the Queen. I celebrate Independence Day with pride and enthusiasm. But I have been an Anglophile since the time I was a little boy during World War II. I have been to London at least ten times and have never tired of it (“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.” – Samuel Johnson [1709-1784]), but that does not explain my strong affinity for the English people.
    There is no one event to explain my unabashed anglophilism but I think it emanates from the radio broadcasts of the war which extolled the heroic efforts of Londoners to survive German bombings and V2 rocket attacks and to the reaction of my parents and grandparents to those events. I was too young to regularly go to movies and see newsreels but we had many newspapers in our house (the Daily News, the Journal-American, the Herald-Tribune, the New York Post—it was one of the leading liberal papers then—and the Forward) all of which were read daily by my grandfather and my parents and all of which featured pictures from the war.
    Most of my feelings about Britain and its people developed after the war, when I was older and more aware, able to enjoy films made during and after the war (e.g. Mrs. Miniver, a marvelous film I have seen many times since; In Which We Serve, Waterloo Bridge and, of course, Laurence Olivier’s magnificent Henry V, which so vividly depicts the Battle of Agincourt and which he produced in order to encourage his beleaguered countrymen) which portrayed love of country and courage. I was introduced to the King Arthur stories when I was still a child. One of my favorite record albums (vinyl) was Robin Hood starring Basil Rathbone and, somehow, I was not confused when Rathbone appeared in Sherlock Holmes movies (e.g. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles).
    But my regard for Elizabeth definitely began in the war years. My mother was the model for my anglophilism. She loved the novels of Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott. She loved Shakespeare. And she loved British movies.
     My first memory of Elizabeth is when I was three or four, seeing a newspaper photo of her learning to repair military vehicles. My father was a truck mechanic and I had seen him changing a tire on our car so I had no trouble understanding what she was doing. At some time, my mother told how George VI, Elizabeth’s father, elected to keep the family in London during the bombings to maintain the public’s morale and about Elizabeth’s wartime broadcasts to cheer up the children of Great Britain. We didn’t have a television set in 1947 (almost no one did at that time) when Elizabeth married but my mother was glued to our Dumont console for her coronation in 1953, a year after her ascension to the throne, and I watched with her.
    Elizabeth was a realist and a pragmatist who made very few mistakes during her 70-year reign. She worked with 14 Prime Ministers, from the giant Winston Churchill to the often buffoonish Boris Johnson. She helped her people weather wars, from World War II to Afghanistan, and a host of domestic crises, never abandoning her intense commitment to her people and to the institution of British Royalty. She presided over the diminution of the Empire, understanding the need to recognize the intense pressures for independence of former colonies while struggling to preserve, as much as possible, the entity about which it was once said, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.”
    Over the years we have been able to watch some of the pageantry of the United Kingdom, from Elizabeth’s coronation to the wedding of Charles and Diana to the death of Phillip. I think Charles will slowly but surely lead his people to a new iteration of the grand history of his country, struggling to contain the strident voices who would dismiss the monarchy. He seems committed to preserving the past while being mindful of the need to deal with the forces of change. Elizabeth’s funeral will likely be the last time we see that kind of grand, public expression of the majesty and the power of the Crown.
    A story currently circulating is that of Richard Griffin, a former Royal protection officer, who, for many years, accompanied the Queen on picnics in the woods outside Balmoral Castle. Once they met a pair of Americans. As was her custom when meeting people, Elizabeth stopped to say “hello.” Griffin notes that it was clear they didn’t recognize the Queen and the American gentleman proceeded to tell her where came from, where they were going next and where they’d been in Britain. He said to the Queen, “And where do you live?” She told him she lived in London but had a holiday home close to where they were. He then asked how long she had been visiting the area. When she replied “for over 80 years,” he said, “Well, you must have met the Queen.” She immediately said, “Well, I haven’t but Dickie here,” gesturing to Griffin, “meets her regularly.” When asked what she was like, Griffin, knowing she enjoyed a good joke, said, “She can be cantankerous at times, but she’s got a lovely sense of humor.” The tourist then posed next to Griffin and, still unaware of her identity, asked the Queen to snap a photo of them. Mr. Griffin and the Queen then traded places and he took a photo of the monarch with the tourists. After they left, Elizabeth said to Griffin, “I’d love to be a fly on the wall when he shows those photographs to friends in America. Hopefully, someone will tell him who I am.” You can see Griffin telling the story with this YouTube link:         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw9g1Q74t4s 
    I loved reading this warm and loving story and seeing that interview. That night I dreamt that I had met the Queen with no one around us. In my dream I recognized her immediately but was confused about how I should greet her. I envisioned dropping to one knee, as if I were her subject, and saying something like “Your majesty” while avoiding eye contact until she acknowledges me, or, instead, when, in my dream, she offers her hand, just accepting it and saying, “So nice to meet you, ma’am.” I woke up without the question being resolved but knowing I would respond as a highly respectful American, rather than a citizen of the realm.
    What thoughts come to mind when I consider Elizabeth? Dignity. Intelligence. Strength. Good humor. Tolerance. Humility.
    She was a part of our lives for a very long time but we will all move on. I am saddened by her death but somewhat surprised to realize I’m not particularly grieving for her loss. Instead, I will remain grateful to have been alive during this Elizabethian era, enriched as so many, by her life. I will watch her funeral ceremonies tomorrow and appreciate all the pomp and circumstance she deserves, realizing that a similar event of this magnitude and splendor will never happen again.