Chattanooga Times Free Press

Soddy-Daisy woman self-professed Anglophile

Mark Kennedy

Ashley Brown, of Soddy-Daisy, is an unlikely Anglophile.

Brown traces her fascination with the British royals to a book report she wrote in third grade at Daisy Elementary.

Brown, 38, said she chose to read a library book about Queen Elizabeth II on a whim, because “somebody had already taken the Oprah (Winfrey) book.”

She remembers being drawn to the book about the queen because of a photograph of the British monarch on the cover.

“I remember she had kind eyes and was wearing a crown,” Brown said in a telephone interview.

The book report began a decadeslong interest in Queen Elizabeth II, which led to an emotional reaction to the queen’s death on Sept 8.

Brown said she was at work at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, where she is a senior events specialist, when the news broke. She said she had to excuse herself to shed a few tears in the restroom.

Immediately, Brown’s phone lit up with friends checking on her. Brown’s admiration of the queen and her family is so profound that everybody in her orbit knows about her passion. It’s become a facet of her personality.

Her feelings are so deep, in fact, that it even seems to surprise her a little. It’s not like she shares an obviously cultural link with the British.

“My family doesn’t understand it at all,” Brown says. “I come from a humble upbringing, from a very Southern family.”

Nonetheless, Brown has been smitten with the royals since girlhood, a feeling that has grown to encompass the whole, contemporary House of Windsor.

As she grew older, Brown said her fascination with the Queen — whom she admired for being a WWII veteran — spread to her grandson, Prince William. William became better known worldwide in 1997 after the death of his mother, Princess Diana, in an auto accident.

“Every girl my age was fascinated with him,” Brown says. “Seeing him walk behind that carriage (at Diana’s funeral) really pulled at my heartstrings.”

Later, when William met and later married Kate Middleton, Brown began to follow their family life in the media. At the supermarket checkout, she was a sucker for any magazine with William and Kate on the cover.

Slowly, the fascination became a full-blown hobby. Brown read books about the royals and watched all the modern TV shows about the monarchy. She was famous for wanting to take her birthday meals at a now-closed Chattanooga tea room. And she was always up to go any restaurant that had “pub” in the name.

Earlier this year, Brown even fulfilled her lifelong dream to visit London. To do so, she had to overcome a lot of inertia: It would be her first international trip, she has a phobia of flying over water, and at the time of her trip, her grandfather was ill.

Still, when a potential travel-mate said she was going to visit a child studying in England and asked Brown to come along, she agreed.

“For all the bad things that happened during the pandemic, one of the good things was realizing how short life is,” Brown said. “You have to take opportunities when they come your way.”

Once in London, Brown quickly ditched her bags at her hotel and headed directly for Buckingham Palace. While abroad, she also visited Kensington Palace, Edinburgh, Scotland, and Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in London, where she had her picture made beside a wax statue of Queen Elizabeth II.

In retrospect, Brown says she is glad she made it to London while the queen was still alive. Since her death earlier this month, a famous quote from the Queen has been looping through Brown’s mind.

“She famously said after 9/11 that ‘grief is the price we pay for love,’” Brown says, a sentiment that has given her quiet comfort in the weeks since the 96-year-old Queen of England passed away.

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2022-09-26T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-09-26T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.timesfreepress.com/article/281689733683661

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