The events of June 2-5 in Great Britain, however, called to him. The British expatriate became the fervent patriot as Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee rolled out before his proud eyes. And it took him back.
One of those mementoes, you see, came from the queen’s white-gloved hand.
“I relinquished my British citizenship, but you never do that,” says the 58-year-old head of MAKSolve, an environmental consulting company.
“You never really lose it. The pageantry, the tradition, the splendor, the overall exuberance of what’s transpired over those days in the United Kingdom, it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It’s been happening for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.”
You only have to go back to June 7, 1977, for Kerr’s brush with royalty. He was serving with the British royal navy aboard the HMS Hermes, an aircraft carrier served by 1,645 men. The event was a celebration of the queen’s Silver Jubilee, or 25 years on the throne.
Kerr, a petty officer in charge of electrical operations on the flight deck, was the only one on board chosen to receive a silver medal struck in honor of the occasion. He pointed out that of the 25,000 medals minted, most went to heads of state in the commonwealth, members of Parliament and high-ranking officers in the armed services. Kerr’s ship was part of a flotilla of 150 or so in Portsmouth Harbor in southern England.
He and nine other servicemembers boarded the Royal Yacht Britannia and were taken to a stateroom. He met and shook hands with Prince Charles (“He was a hoot”), the queen and Prince Philip.
“It took three or four seconds for that to happen,” he said with a laugh. “Then we mulled around in there, the queen just walking around and chatting with us for a few moments, and then it was over with. But what an experience.”
It was actually his third time meeting the queen, with both others being chance encounters helped along by his father, an army staff sergeant in the military police, being part of the queen’s security presence. The first encounter was in Malta when he was 10, the second in Singapore at age 14.
Recently, he was very much there in spirit again.
“It’s what makes England unique,” he says. He returned to England in June for a royal navy reunion. “This jubilee celebration is nothing more than cementing further that tradition, that monarchy, and the value that they bring to the citizenry of the United Kingdom.
“Look at the queen. I apologize, even talking about it, it’s moving. You have a quarter of a million people or more lining the mall to say hello to their monarch. That to me was emotional; it was cool and quite frankly transcended the previous night” when marquee musicians celebrated her in concert. “If you saw her, she was wearing earplugs.”
Kerr came to the U.S. for the same reason countless others have.
“There was not that much opportunity for veterans to get quality jobs,” in England at the time, he says.
“America has provided me with such a wealth and broad-based opportunity to do what I like to do. My friends in England didn’t get that opportunity.”
Talking about the Fourth of July (or, as American friends of long ago dubbed it for him, “Annual Losers’ Day”), Kerr drew a parallel between the monarchy and American institutions.
“To some, it’s pomp and circumstance paid for by the poor taxpayer, and that in 2012, there’s no place for it. I totally disagree with that,” he says.
“Compare and contrast that to what we in America feel about our Constitution, what we feel about our forefathers; how we hold so dear that document, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and how we fight so hard to maintain what that Constitution is all about and what it means to America and Americans. It’s the same as those people in England.”
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