Across the Southland, the Wee Hours Belonged to Diana

Richard Welsh had watched television coverage of Princess Diana all week. He had clipped the newspaper stories for a scrapbook. He had thought a lot about his father, who died 15 years ago.

And at 3:03 a.m. Saturday, nestled before a television set in the quiet back room of a West Hollywood coffeehouse, Welsh wept like a child.

The sight of the princess’ flag-draped casket caused a similar burst of emotion among several others in the room--AIDS activists who shrugged off sleep to honor the woman who had done so much to help their cause.

Across Southern California, the wee hours belonged to Diana.

If proof was needed of her profound and far-flung appeal, it could be measured in the emotional clusters of residents all over the region who huddled before TV sets, the closest they could come to being part of Diana’s funeral half a globe and eight time zones away.

The mourners gathered in homes, English-style pubs and college dormitories, joining in a ritual of worldwide grief that also offered moments of private ceremony. British-born Zoe Howard, watching in her Glendale home, changed from pajamas into a dress just before the casket was carried into Westminster Abbey in London. At the Cock ‘n’ Bull pub in Santa Monica, former British serviceman Damian Lunt stood at attention as soldiers carried the coffin. A viewer in a Rosemead home recited the Lord’s Prayer.

Heidi Hanzi and Catherine Fernandes set their alarm then fought back yawns as they watched in their Santa Monica apartment.

“She did so many great works that waking up at 2 a.m. to pay tribute to her seems minuscule,” said the 24-year-old Hanzi, her gaze fixed on two candles flickering on the coffee table. “It’s just the right thing to do, to be as close to it as we can.”

Participating in a unique moment in history--that was certainly part of the reason so many gave up a decent night’s sleep. There was whispered odds-making about the royal family’s future and sympathetic sighs at the sight of Diana’s two sons, Princes William and Harry. There were strong mixed reactions to the peppery eulogy by Charles Spencer, Diana’s brother, and tears upon hearing singer Elton John’s poignant performance at the service.

But the gatherings were also a chance to craft a legacy for Diana. To the group of activists in West Hollywood, she was an AIDS crusader for extending an ungloved hand to a patient to show there was no danger. To a group of first-year female students at UCLA, she seemed the very ideal of modern womanhood--regal, yet caring and down to earth. A British visitor in Orange County said Diana showed “the better side of Britain, the emotional side of Britain, the side that made Britain tick.”

Even Diana’s failings became points of commonality.

“The powers that be couldn’t find a place for her. That’s a feeling that people in the gay community can relate to--about being accepted, being judged,” said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. The group runs WEHO Lounge, which houses the West Hollywood coffeehouse and other services related to acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Those who may have felt the closest kinship were Britons now living in the United States.

Howard and her family were in London last Sunday when they heard about Diana’s death. Since their return home Monday, the Howards awaited the funeral as an opportunity to reconnect with their nation and the member of the royal family who they said best represented them.

On Saturday morning, Howard, her husband, Max, and mother, Monica Bright, prayed and quietly sang along with the proceedings in London as more than a dozen votive candles flickered in their Glendale living room.

Expatriates Valerie Lowerison of Camarillo and longtime friend Joan Knight sipped tea and nibbled cucumber and salmon sandwiches while watching the funeral coverage at Knight’s Oxnard home. Both are members of a social and charity group called Daughters of the British Empire, whose stiff-upper-lip motto is: “Not ourselves, but the cause.”

At the Cock ‘n’ Bull pub, about 30 regulars sipped tea and coffee and stared in silence at the television coverage. Candles burned beneath half a dozen makeshift shrines to the princess.

“This is the most somber atmosphere I’ve ever seen here,” said pub owner Tony Moogan, who moved from Liverpool in 1980.

But the familiarity bred by media coverage also had left Americans considering the princess one of their own--and they were displaying hurt over her loss.

“I don’t think I will see anything like this again in my life,” said Rosemead resident Patricia Quinones, curled up on the sofa at home as daughters Samantha, 9, and Erika, 13, sat nearby. The trio on Friday drove to the British Consulate to sign a book of condolence.

Anne Gentling, an American, sat crying in front of the Cock ‘n’ Bull’s giant television screen. She recalled the time in 1981, at the age of 12, when she arose at 4 a.m. to join family and neighbors to watch Diana’s wedding to Prince Charles.

Now she was up again in the middle of the night to honor Diana, recalling how years ago she had longed to swap places with Diana.

“She was the princess everyone could be,” Gentling said through tears. “She represented my generation, where women are stronger and stand up for themselves. Nothing could stop her.”

The ceremony was also marked publicly elsewhere in the United States and the world.

In New York, the mood was somber at a dimly lit bar called The British Open. In the front window hung signs saying, “Farewell Diana.”

In Atlanta, more than 200 people, many with tears streaming, huddled against the morning chill before two giant television screens near a statue presented by the Prince of Wales Trust in honor of last year’s Olympic Games.

Wylene Bird, a 51-year-old Atlanta teacher, said the outpouring of emotion would have surprised Diana.

“I don’t think she realized herself that she was loved so much, and I’m so sorry she didn’t find out before she passed away,” Bird said.

Vacationing in Edgartown, Mass., President Clinton devoted his weekly radio address to Diana and Mother Teresa, the Calcutta-based nun who died Friday, saying the two were “ultimately bound together by a common concern for, and commitment to, the dignity and worth of every human being . . .”

In San Francisco, at least 10,000 mourners holding candles walked down Market Street to the British Consulate downtown hours before the funeral. The British Consulate in Los Angeles had collected about 10,000 messages of condolence in about 20 books.

Around the world, hundreds of millions watched the service on television--from Thailand and Tonga to Poland and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Yachts in “millionaires’ piers” on the French Riviera lowered flags to half-mast, as did flags at public buildings in the Republic of Ireland--the first such gesture for a British national since the Irish Republican Army assassinated Lord Mountbatten, Prince Charles’ uncle, in 1979.

Some funeral viewers were considering the history books, comparing the long reach of anguish over Diana’s death to the upset that accompanied the deaths of other figures. At UCLA’s Sproul Hall, three students watching the funeral on TV predicted that the princess’ loss would mark their generation in much the way the death of John F. Kennedy affected their parents.

“She was such a good person,” said Dionne Mitchell, 18. “She tried to help less fortunate people with her wealth and power. I think that’s why people liked her so much.”

In New York, Michael Hamill, a London lawyer passing through the city, tried his hand at prediction. “If I was to try to imagine how it will be in a year’s time or two years’ time,” Hamill said, “I imagine she will be, in a sense, like Elvis: dead but not dead. Still in people’s minds.”

Times staff writers Jack Leonard and Deborah Schoch contributed to this report from Southern California. Also contributing were correspondents Richard Winton in Los Angeles; Mimi Ko Cruz in Orange County; Nick Green in Ventura County; Lisa Meyer in New York; Anna M. Virtue in Miami; Edith Stanley in Atlanta; John Beckham in Chicago; and Lianne Hart in Houston; in addition to Reuters.