Rishard Khan
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt
The wife of former T&T President George Maxwell Richards, Jean Ramjohn-Richards, has described Queen Elizabeth II as one of the best Heads of State she’s met.
Through her late husband, Ramjohn-Richards hosted the Queen on her two most recent visits to T&T - the first was in 1985 at the University of the West Indies while her husband was principal, and again in 2009 for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, while she was the first lady of T&T.
“She impressed me as a very down-to-earth person, very ordinary. She made you feel so comfortable and... she had a sense of humour, just like her late husband, the Duke of Edinburgh,” Ramjohn-Richards told Guardian Media yesterday.
“She was really, really a nice person and motherly,” she added.
She said Queen Elizabeth’s commitment to duty always impressed her, noting that even earlier this week, despite feeling unwell, the Queen met with Liz Truss to ask her to form a British government.
“A number of people would say I’m too tired, I’m not feeling well,” she said.
Born in 1936, Ramjohn-Richards developed into a woman living in a country under the rule of the British crown for 139 years and would continue that way until 1962. In these formative years of her youth, Ramjohn-Richards said she always held deep admiration and respect for the then-Princess Elizabeth and her younger sister Princess Margaret, who were both just a few years older than herself.
“They were my role models, I really, really liked them,” Ramjohn-Richards said.
“I always talked about the royal family and so on and my siblings used to tease me and call me a Queen person.”
It’s why she described being able to meet Queen Elizabeth II twice in her lifetime as “surreal.”
Ramjohn-Richards said she was also fortunate to have met the immediate members of the Royal Family, except Princess Diana.
On the Queen’s passing, Ramjohn-Richards said: “She did a fantastic job and so it’s time for her to go to rest and meet her husband. May she rest in peace.”
“I think after her husband passed, she seemed to have started going down then. She’s been with him for what, 70 years? That’s a long time. My husband died just before we were 50 years married and I miss him a lot,” she added.