Marcia Ambrose had a brush with royalty in 1969 when she was a student at Clear Lake High School.
The 16-year-old schoolgirl stood among her classmates on Nov. 5, 1969, at the Mason City Airport to greet His Royal Highness, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, when he arrived for a brief refueling stint and an even shorter encounter with the large crowd gathered to see him.
“I was shocked,” Ambrose told Globe Gazette reporters on the scene that day. “He didn’t look like what we expected at all.”
In the next day’s Globe Gazette, Ambrose and other Clear Lake students – Lynn Holden, 16; Sandy Frederichs, 17; Candy Thornberg, 17; and Becky Thompson, 17 – said they were allowed to miss school for the event because they were studying English literature at the time.
“We’ve never seen a prince before,” they said that day.
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Before the highest ranking pilot to ever land at the Mason City Airport arrived, the Clear Lake students described Prince Philip as “a man who acts like royalty, kind of tall, with a long nose and not bad looking, especially when wearing his uniform.”
That day, the prince arrived wearing English tweeds and stepped out of the twin-engine Andover aircraft to an appreciative crowd, some waving flags and many taking photos of the historic event.
Prince Philip, the irascible and tough-minded husband of Queen Elizabeth II, who spent more than seven decades supporting his wife in a role that both defined and constricted his life, died on Friday, Buckingham Palace said. He was 99.
His life spanned nearly a century of European history, starting with his birth as a member of the Greek royal family and ending as Britain’s longest serving consort during a turbulent reign in which the thousand-year-old monarchy was forced to reinvent itself for the 21st century.
He was known for his occasionally deeply offensive remarks — and for gamely fulfilling more than 20,000 royal engagements to boost British interests at home and abroad.
He headed hundreds of charities, founded programs that helped British schoolchildren participate in challenging outdoor adventures, and played a prominent part in raising his four children, including his eldest son, Prince Charles, the heir to the throne.
Philip, who served in the Royal Navy during World War II, married the future queen in 1947 and kept up a full schedule of public appearances until he retired in 2017.
On March 16, he was released from the hospital looking tired and gaunt after receiving treatment for an undisclosed infection and a heart problem.
The royal visit
The 1969 Globe Gazette article said that while the Mason City Airport had fuel trucks ready to feed the Prince’s airplane when it arrived, it wasn’t prepared for the royalty’s unexpected request for food.
Flight Lt. Graham Emmerson, co-pilot of the prince’s plane, presented the list of needed grocery items, and according to the Globe Gazette article, “didn’t become ruffled when told there was ‘no food at the inn.’”
Why? The airport’s restaurant was closed for remodeling, leaving Mason City officials to scramble to try to meet the request.
According to the Globe Gazette’s story, an order was quickly called in to a Mason City grocery store, and though Dr. Harold H Jennings, chairman of the Mason City Airport Commission, “tried to break all delivery boy records,” the food arrived too late.
The Prince’s plane, full of fuel, had already taxied off to head to its destination in Washington, D.C. to visit President Richard Nixon.
“I hope the President feeds him well tonight,” said airport manager Robert Fricker sadly said that day as he watched the plane take off.
When asked at the time what would happen to Prince Philip’s groceries, Fricker said he would “either stage a British party or change the restaurant’s menu.”
Official greeting
According to the Globe Gazette’s 1969 story, Mason City Mayor George Mendon took no chances of having anything going wrong when he presented the key to the city to Prince Philip.
Mendon made the presentation in the nearly private confines of the conference room at the Mason City Airport where the Prince rested before a brief press conference.
Speculation at the time was that the presentation was made in relative privacy instead of in front of a crowd because of what the Prince was reported to say after receiving the key to Canada while on an earlier stop on his trip.
The Prince reportedly said, “Oh, lord, not another one.”
Jerry Smith is sports editor and special projects editor for the Globe Gazette. You can reach him at jerry.smith@globegazette.com or by phone at 641-421-0556.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.