The View From Here . . .
By Bob Morgan, Jr.

Ten years ago this week came the shocking news that Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, died suddenly and tragically in a traffic accident in Paris.

I heard the news in a rather odd way. It was a Sunday morning and my late wife, Maureen, my son, Robert, then age three, and two friends were waiting on line to take the backstretch tour at Saratoga Race Course upstate when I saw a copy of the local paper, the Saratogian, in the newsrack that had the word Diana in the headline. I didn't react with any curiosity since the feature race that day was coincidentally named the Diana Handicap and I just assumed that the story related to that event. It took a few minutes for Maureen to see the same headline, buy the paper and spread the sad news.

In any event, there was truly an orgy of emotion around the world surrounding the death of the princess. Diana was already world famous because of her marriage to Prince Charles and her subsequent tumultuous divorce. People on both sides of the Atlantic were caught up in the drama of the loss of the glamorous young "People's Princess" and huge amounts of flowers were placed in front of Kensington Palace. The funeral, watched by hundreds of millions around the globe, included an emotional tribute by Diana's brother, Lord Spencer, and an adaptation by Elton John of his hit song Candle in the Wind was followed by a private burial at her family's estate at Althorp. And there was the sad vision of the two teenage princes, Harry and William, paying final tribute to their mother.

And of course, there were controversies surrounding the funeral. Lord Spencer's eulogy lashed out at the royal family for stripping Diana of the title Her Royal Highness, declaring that "She needed no royal title to continue to generate her own particular brand of magic", and also at elements of the news media which he declared as at the "other end of the moral spectrum."

Perhaps more importantly Queen Elizabeth and the entire royal family came under considerable fire, both for not flying the flag at Buckingham Palace at half staff (that apparently violated a tradition) and not showing more emotion at the loss of the princess.

I suspect that the reaction would be considerably more muted if a similar tragedy were to happen in 2007. Whether or not it was time of missed opportunities, the 1990's were a more placid time than the present decade. 9/11 was still four years in the future and much of the news coverage during next eighteen months after Diana's passing was devoted to President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky rather than to weightier matters. With the exception of the rather minor Kosovo war in 1999, the United States was largely at peace in the nineties. Events like the death of the princess were magnified by dearth of huge global issues.

Still, if the outpouring of sadness may seem a little over the top ten years later, the death of Diana did bring us together for a short time, as we collectively felt a sense of loss that someone so young, so beautiful, so vital ("England's Rose," in Elton John's song) had been taken from us far too soon.