The day I saw Queen Elizabeth

I’m back after a month with a more personal type of story. That’s what CohenConnect.com will be again, along with some opinion. 

The news moved to FloridaFreaks.com, where I’ve been adding older articles that were never on this site. I hope to write new stories there again next week.

Physical moving – as opposed to the kind involving stories and websites – has been too big a part of my adult life, and not throwing anything out has helped support the moving industry.

That’s finally changing.

Last week, I found something that reminded me of my time at the University of South Florida in Tampa, a lifetime ago.

This future journalist was interning in the newsroom at WFLA-TV during the summer semester of 1991.

Queen Elizabeth II was about to visit and it was an exciting time.

Despite all the excitement, I don’t remember much from that day, exactly 34 years ago. Just two things stand out, so please excuse me if something you’re about to read is slightly off.

First, I got to go. I don’t remember the circumstances, or whether I was even scheduled to be out with a reporter that day. Maybe I asked to go.

However it happened, I was dead weight.

People at the station were discussing security measures at the University of Tampa and I didn’t want anything to go wrong with my sightseeing, so I mentioned credentials to the woman in charge of interns. She quickly typed a letter from the news director that explained my presence, and then she signed it.

I was driven to the university. It’s strange, for somebody with a good memory, that I don’t remember anything about people with me, in front of or behind the camera.

I can only recall being in a room for a private reception. It wasn’t the main university event, where the mayor presented the queen with a gift from the city.

That’s my second memory. It was a relatively small, intimate room, with a few dozen people.

Then, the queen entered. She stood and talked with a few people. That was it. She was 15-20 feet from me.

Of course, there were no cellphones in those days. I didn’t know to bring a camera, and couldn’t find any photos from this VIP event of the queen’s visit. I spent a while looking, last night.

So there’s no proof, unless someone I was with has a much better memory of me. I also don’t think I did any intern work that day (nor several others). I was definitely not intern of the year.

I also found an extremely clever and classy ad in the old Tampa Tribune from the competition at WTVT, plugging their coverage of the royal visit. I don’t think we had one.

Among the people working at WFLA at the time: Bob Hite, Gayle Sierens, Mark Strassmann (whose wife I worked with a few years later), Linda Vester (who was one of just a handful of local reporters to go overseas during the Gulf War, which had only ended about three months before), and the late Barbara Callahan.