ANNIVERSARY: LOCAL RESIDENT REMEMBERS OUTPOURING FOR PRINCESS

~Editor's note: Tamara Baldwin is an associate professor in the department of mass communication at Southeast Missouri State University and teaches history of mass media and mass media theory and research classes. Her husband, Henry Sessoms, is a professor of English and director of the Missouri-London Program and taught in London during the fall 1997 semester.

The British have a not-so-elegant word to describe the feeling one has when one is literally hit in the face with something totally overwhelming or unexpected. That word is "gob-smacked," and it applied quite aptly to the whole of England, and much of the world, at the news of Princess Diana's tragic and untimely death one year ago today.

Because I was on sabbatical from teaching during the fall 1997 semester, I had the opportunity to be in London when news of the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayad broke. Like many Londoners, I woke on a bright and rain-free Sunday morning, turned on the television, and was hit with the news that during the night Princess Diana had died of injuries she had received in a car crash in Paris as she and her companion, Dodi Fayad, were being pursued by paparazzi.

The earliest editions of the London Times and other papers reported only that she had been injured in the crash, but many of the tabloid newspapers quickly put out extra editions to report her death. The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) had nonstop coverage of the details of her death all day on their two television channels, BBC 1 and BBC 2. The other networks followed suit for most of the day.

While in London, my husband and I lived just a few minutes' walk from Kensington Palace, Princess Diana's residence. Unable to absorb the news and numbed by it at the same time, we walked down Kensington High Street to the entrance of the palace and saw that the road leading up to the palace had been closed and that several policemen were posted there.

A crowd had already begun to gather and the first of the flowers for Diana began to arrive. People, unable to believe the news and at the same time knowing it was true, paid tribute to Diana and Dodi by bringing bouquets of flowers to the gates of the palace, along with notes of condolence, photos, hand-drawn and written cards, stuffed animals and candles.

One handwritten tribute hanging from a tree read, "You had the human touch. That's why we loved you so much. God bless you and keep you, our Queen of Hearts."

In the days following her death, the tributes grew to enormous proportions; literally millions of flowers were laid in front of the palaces and placed along the fence surrounding her home and the park. No doubt anyone will forget the photographs of the sea of flowers outside Kensington Palace that were piled so high and covered acres.

People were also gathering and laying flowers and remembrances at Buckingham Palace, the Queen's residence, and St. James' Palace, where Diana's body lay in state until the night before her funeral when it was returned to Kensington Palace.

The size of the crowds of mourners was staggering. I know that I will never see anything like it again in my lifetime. Kensington Park, which covers 273 acres, was filled with people bringing flowers or standing silently weeping or contemplating what they were viewing. Perhaps the only comparable event in my lifetime, which many people can relate this to, is the assassination and funeral of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

The mood of the people in the crowds was somber. With thousands of people gathered and waiting patiently in long queues to place their flowers or to sign one of the many condolence books the Royal Family provided for members of the public to sign, I would have expected a certain amount of noise, but that wasn't the case. A respectful silence pervaded the crowds that we witnessed, the sound broken only by the voices of crying babies or children too young to understand what was going on.

On the day of Princess Diana's funeral, we were among the crowds lining the street and saw the funeral cortege pass on its journey to take the Princess' body to Westminster Abbey for the funeral. We then walked to Hyde Park, which covers close to 400 acres, to join the hundred thousand others viewing the funeral on two giant television screens set up for this purpose.

Many of the newspapers had printed the exact wording of the service in their morning editions, and people followed along from their newspapers. When Elton John sang his reworded version of "Candle in the Wind," people all around us wept. When the Princess' brother, the Earl Spencer, delivered his eulogy and condemned the paparazzi who made his sister "the most hunted person of the modern age," a great cheer arose from the crowd.

For at least two weeks after the funeral, people still flocked to Kensington Palace to place flowers, the flow of them stemmed finally when official word was put out encouraging people to show their respect by making a donation to the Princess of Wales Memorial Fund instead.

Finally, too, the task of removing all the flowers began. One London newspaper reported that it would take one person 6 1/2 years to remove the 15,000 tons of flowers mourners placed in front of Kensington, Buckingham, and St. James' palaces, but with the help of hundreds of volunteers headed up by the Royal Parks staff, the cleanup took about five weeks to complete.

And now, one year after her death, even though the various tributes have been removed from in front of the palaces in London and people have resumed their normal routines, it is clear that Princess Diana's legacy and memory will never fade. She was the "people's princess," their "Queen of Hearts," and they won't soon forget her.

Tamara Baldwin is an associate professor in the department of mass communication at Southeast Missouri State University and teaches history of mass media and mass media theory and research classes. Her husband, Henry Sessoms, is a professor of English and director of the Missouri-London Program and taught in London during the fall 1997 semester.