An American woman who was crowned Queen of Beara in 1983 at the Festival of the Sea has relived the moment - almost four decades later. Laurie Holland, from Butte, Montana, celebrated her 70th birthday last month and proudly donned her sash and lifted her trophy to recall the moment she won the competition.
Laurie’s sister Nancy Holland Powell has just returned to the US after a visit to Castletownbere and West Cork to relive what Nancy described was for Laurie as ‘one of her most treasured memories of her trip to Ireland’. Nancy said: ‘My sister was stunning back then with beautiful blonde hair, people said she looked like Marilyn Monroe.’
Laurie shared her memories of her summer in Ireland when she was 28 and had just graduated college. She told her mother she was ‘going to look up grandma Downey’s birthplace’, explaining: ‘All my mom had was a little piece of paper that said Glenbeg, Castletownbere.’
Laurie recalled her bus trip from Dublin to West Cork and then going with relatives to the Festival of the Sea. She ended up with a group of young strangers and being crowned Queen of Beara. Laurie told Th e Southern Star: ‘They put a sash on me, a tiara on my head, suddenly there was a throne carried by four men. I thought I was hallucinating.’
Laurie had to fly back to the US for her brother’s wedding shortly afterwards, so she missed her year as Queen.
She mused: ‘I would have reigned over Castletownbere, and met a nice Irish chap and got married and have six children. But as an independent woman I would have run for mayor and be elected Taoiseach...’ Not staying on to see what might happen next, she admits, is ‘one of the biggest regrets of my life’.
