First published by the Sunday Observer on June 10, 2012.

If it’s egg, Jamaica has to be in the red!

As Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Diamond Jubilee year, one British-born Jamaican can look back across the years when she was a witness of sorts to the events leading up to the coronation of Princess Elizabeth as Queen.

Penelope Jane Stewart, affectionately known as “PJ”, ex-wife of hotel mogul Gordon “Butch” Stewart, was living in Kenya with her family when news came that King George VI, father of Princess Elizabeth, had died in England. That set in train a series of fortuitous events that would touch PJ’s family.

The story began, of course, when PJ’s father, Michael Foxley Norris, decided to leave England to establish a farm, along with his partner, Peter Marrian, at Nyeri, a small town at the foothills of the Aberdare Mountains in Kenya in 1948.

Foxley Norris took his wife Daphne, who was a nurse, and their three daughters — Carola, 6; Marcia, 3; and PJ, then one-year-old. A fourth daughter, Sarah, was born in the east African country.

While he farmed mainly livestock and coffee, his wife operated a clinic as medical treatment was hard to come by for the Kikuyu and Masai tribal people living in Nyeri.

One end of the farm, which they called Mweiga Estate, bordered on the Aberdare forest that teemed with wildlife such as elephants, rhinoceros, antelopes, warthogs, lions, and leopards.

PJ recalled that a Nyeri hotelier, owner of the Outspan Hotel, had built a two-room tree house, later to be called Treetops Hotel, a safe vantage point in the forest from which visitors on safari could view the wildlife as the animals gathered to drink at the watering hole.

“We would drive up to edge of the forest and walk 10 minutes to Treetops lookout post,” PJ recounts. We had to be escorted by a hunter armed with a rifle. We were told not to talk so as not to startle the animals. I remember being so terrified as a small child. It was both chilling and thrilling.”

It helped that the hunter was her godfather, Jim Corbett, who was also an author, PJ tells the Jamaica Observer.

PJ was 10 years old when the Treetops owner invited Princess Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, to vacation at the safari hotel which by now had been expanded to four rooms.

“Her Land Rover drove through our property on the way to Treetops. There was no pomp and pageantry. My mom, dad, and the four of us children lined up by the roadside to see them. They stopped to speak to Jim Corbett who introduced us to the royal couple.

“Princess Elizabeth remarked to my father: ‘It must have been your grandfather, William Foxley Norris (who was dean of Westminster) who crowned my father, King George’,” PJ recalls.

Late that night, PJ’s dad got a call like no other. His was the only phone in the area, a short distance from Treetops. The call came from the Outspan Hotel and the news was tragic.

“The caller said King George VI had died (of cancer, she was told) and Princess Elizabeth was to return to England immediately to be crowned Queen. My dad was told that they were trying to get the princess by radio and he was to be on standby to take the message to her, if they did not get through. In the end they did get through to her by radio.”

The royal couple left for Nairobi and flew out to England. The following year, at age 26, she was crowned Queen of England.

After 10 years in Kenya, PJ’s family returned to England. She migrated to Jamaica in 1972 and later married Butch Stewart. The union produced two children, Jaime and Adam, the deputy chairman and CEO of the Sandals group (now executive chairman) which includes the Jamaica Observer.

PJ is now a full-time painter, exhibiting both in Jamaica and overseas. She works with Missionaries Of the Poor, designing painting and constructing the sets for Father HoLung’s musical productions.

She also established a fund-raising entity called Back on the Rack, the proceeds of which go to Missionaries Of the Poor. It is a once-a-month sale of new and slightly used clothes and household items that have been donated by friends both here and overseas. It now has a large team of volunteers who participate in the sales.