NI woman recalls meeting Queen twice

Jeanette Warke, who has been the driving force behind the Cathedral Youth club in the loyalist Fountain estate on the city’s west bank for several decades, said she was “shaking like a leaf” with nerves when she came face to face with Elizabeth II in the late 1990s but left “dancing” with pride.

Yesterday, on her way to lay a floral wreath at the Cenotaph in Newtownards as a small tribute to the Queen, the well-known community worker reflected on the two times she met the head of the Royal family.

“I was eight when I first met her,” she said. “Well, I didn’t meet her actually but I was in the Brownies when she came to Brooke Park and we all lined up to greet her.”

One of her first visits after her ascension to the throne was to Londonderry in 1953, when the young sovereign was still in her 20s.

“She was a young woman then,” Ms Warke recalled. “Her coronation was in 1953 so she was a very young woman and she was so beautiful, sitting in an open-top car. I remember at that age we just stood there, in awe, at this beautiful lady — a real Queen.”

She also shared her memories of her meeting in Buckingham Palace in 1999, when she was awarded an MBE in recognition of her contribution to the community.

“I met her when I got my MBE at Buckingham Palace and [sons] Graham and Alan and Trevor were with me,” she said. “They were brought in to sit in the front row. The guy came over and said to them ‘when we give you the nod, stand up and everybody behind you will stand up’. They felt so important that day, as I did, and I was so happy for them.

“To then go and physically go forward and look at the Queen, eye to eye, that was something that you just store up in your head and it never leaves. I was absolutely shaking. Thank God I wasn’t allowed to ask her questions because I was shaking, but I was so proud. We were on such a high. We were the last out of the Palace that day, we danced out.

“We went into a restaurant and one of the boys said ‘my Mum got an MBE from the Queen’ and they must have thought we weren’t wise, but we were just so happy, so privileged and so proud.”

Expressing her sadness at the Queen’s passing, she added: “I just admire the Queen. She is so beautiful and an inspiration to everybody.”