What's Past is Prologue: Remembering the 1939 U.S. visit of Queen Elizabeth II's parents

"What's Past is Prologue" series, an homage to William Shakespeare's "The Tempest," looks at events of the past that seem to reoccur later with remarkable similarities.

Frank Nickell of the Kellerman Foundation for Historic Preservation, previously a longtime faculty member at Southeast Missouri State University, is primary historian for these articles, which are carried intermittently in the Southeast Missourian.

The longest serving monarch in world history, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, will be buried today after a state funeral in London — putting a final period to her record-shattering 70-year reign.

King George VI, whom daughter Elizabeth succeeded on the British throne upon George's sudden death in 1952, made history during the administration of America's 32nd president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

"No British king or queen had ever come to the U.S. or indeed anywhere in North America before George VI's June 7 to 12, 1939, visit with his wife," Nickell said. "Historians have debated if a (British) king had made a visit to the American colonies back in the 18th century, the American Revolution might have not occurred."

History, alas, did not follow that pattern.

The colonists, of course, won the Revolutionary War over the English. Great Britain and the nascent U.S. republic became enemies — perhaps most poignantly recalled later by British forces setting fire to the White House in the War of 1812, Nickell observed.

King George VI of Great Britain in an undated photo during World War II. George VI, father of the late Queen Elizabeth II, made history in 1939 as the first British monarch ever to visit the U.S.Submitted

Enemies to friends

"With Europe poised on the brink of (World War II), Roosevelt realized the necessity of fostering closer ties between the two democracies. Roosevelt believed so strongly in the need for cooperation that he pursued this change in foreign policy at the risk of losing domestic support from the very strong isolationist and anti-British segments of the (U.S.) electorate," according to www.fdrlibrary.org.

While the royal couple visited Washington, D.C., a memorable portion of their American visit was spent at FDR's home in Hyde Park, New York, beginning June 11.

Hot Dog Summit

"FDR wanted the American public to see the British royal family were normal people, kind people, and friends of the U.S.," said Nickell, who himself spent more than four decades on the SEMO history faculty. "Roosevelt hosted a picnic where people ate not from china, but paper plates, which apparently appalled FDR's mother, Sara, who was also present. The Roosevelts served hot dogs, which neither the king nor his wife had ever had before. The queen took a knife and fork and cut the hot dog into bite-sized pieces. King George, by contrast, simply shoved it down his throat. The (monarch) ate it all and asked for another."

Nickell said accounts of the picnic revealed King George also drank beer that day.

"There was cowboy music playing and someone led the singing of 'Home on the Range.' They all had a good old fashioned American experience," Nickell said.

Legacy

"One historian has said it was the hot dog picnic that won World War II," Nickell noted.

World War II began less than three months after the royal visit to the U.S. when Adolf Hitler invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. England immediately declared war on Nazi Germany.

The U.S. entered the fight Dec. 7, 1941, on the side of Great Britain and the other Allied powers when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

The war in Europe ended with Allied victory May 8, 1945, following Hitler's death.

Hostilities ceased in the Pacific with the official capitulation of Japan aboard the U.S.S. Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945.