Posted on 05/03/2007 11:01:36 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- Terry O'Neill was just a wee lad from Liverpool the last time he got within a few feet of Queen Elizabeth II.
Years later, the burly owner of the Beatles-influenced Penny Lane Pub in Richmond plans to have a second brush with English royalty on Thursday -- with a little help from his friends.
O'Neill and his wife, Rose, were among thousands of people expected to jam Capitol Square for a glimpse of the queen and her husband, Prince Philip, when the royals arrive to mark the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown colony.
"I left England to get away from her and what does she do? She follows me over here," O'Neill, 66, joked in the thick Liverpudlian brogue of his youth with Penny Lane's lunch crowd Wednesday.
Thanks to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a former Richmond mayor and occasional Penny Lane patron, the O'Neills have front-row access for the queen's 200-yard "walkabout" from the Executive Mansion to the Capitol's columned south portico.
"Governor Kaine called me and asked if I'd like to be on the queen's route. I asked him if he was joking," O'Neill said. "My wife has been out all day trying to buy the proper hat."
Several hundred people were lined up hours before the gates to Capitol Square opened at 11 a.m.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Meet the queen?....Hillary!’s making a cam-pain stop?........
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