| Edgewood College will confer an honorary doctorate on the princess. She will tour the entire campus, including the high school and the grade school, visit various projects and the faculty and staff who have traveled to Bangkok as part of the exchange program. During her visit, she will dedicate the "Thai Room," a mini-museum of Thai artifacts, books, and paintings, many of which she herself sent in friendship and goodwill. Princess Sirindhorn, an extraordinary and remarkable person, was the third of four children of King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit. She has lived her entire life in Thailand. When she was about two years old, her family left the villa of her birth and moved to Chitralada Villa, a newer residence within the Dusit Palace complex. She still lives there. King Bhumibol built Chitralada School on the palace grounds, and Princess Sirindhorn began her education there. She and her fellow students followed the same curriculum as children in other Thai schools, with one exception: the King personally supervised their teachers, because he did not want them to show any special favors to the students. Princess Sirindhorn confided that she was not spared the usual discipline: "I was quite naughty at times," she acknowledges. The school's teaching staff included a Japanese man who taught drawing and painting, a French woman who taught physical education, and several Britons who taught English and French. Most of the other teachers were Thai, including one of her favorites, Khru Kamchai, who introduced the princess to Thai stories, songs, and the pleasures of writing poetry and who also taught her a smattering of Pali, a language she would study seriously later on. Princess Sirindhorn led a cloistered palace life, but she worked hard to excel in her lessons. Later, in her teen-age years, she began accompanying her father as he visited his subjects and made the rounds of his many projects around the country. She excelled in the arts and music and later enrolled in Chulalongkorn University, which she chose because of its excellent courses in Thai language and literature. Here she was exposed to life beyond the palace, although she continued to assist her father in his various philanthropic projects. She admits that at the time she was not much help, but eventually she became an indispensable assistant to him. Princess Sirindhorn went on to earn an M.A. in Oriental Epigraphy (Sanskrit and Cambodian) from Silpakorn University in 1978 and an M.A. in Pali and Sanskrit from Chulalongkorn University in 1980. In 1987, she earned a doctorate in development education from Srinakharinwirot University. Today she is constantly at her father's side, jotting down his observations and thoughts. She has learned how to place people at ease and how to obtain useful information for achieving practical solutions to local problems. She also acts as a surrogate for her father, who often meets as many as 10,000 people when he tours rural areas. "It is impossible for him to talk to everybody," she notes, so she often accepts letters and petitions on his behalf and directs them to her father or to the appropriate government agency. Princess Sirindhorn is a humanitarian in her own right. Helping her father is an important priority, but her own projects and interests also absorb an enormous amount of her time. Like all princesses, she must surely have yearned for the freedom of a more anonymous life. But she seems to be at peace with the restrictions of royalty, as well as with its privileges. She carries the latter with grace and lack of pretense, and gives so much in return, to the delight modern Thais, who often say that she is like her father, "the good king." Princess Sirindhorn is known as "the good princess": high praise, but so well deserved. You can find out more about this remarkable lady at http://www.kanchanapisek.or.th/. |
| A PRINCESS VISITS MADISON, WISCONSIN by Jennifer Braun |
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| Her Royal Highness Thai Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn |
| The Edgewood College community in Madison, Wisconsin will soon receive a visit from Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand! She will visit the campus as a guest of Professor William H. Young, a long time trustee of Edgewood College. Professor Young has spent many of the last 35 years of his life ? he is 92 ? training and consulting with public officers of Asia, particularly those of the Pacific Rim, in the management and economics of development. The Royal Kingdom of Thailand has been a major center of his activities Professor Young became a trustee of Edgewood College in 1980. In that capacity, he attempted to enrich and broaden Edgewood?s educational program by acquainting student and faculty with the culture, economy, and government of Thailand, an effort which helped the Thai institutions as well. For the past several years, Edgewood schools have exchanged faculty and students with Vajiravudh College in Bangkok. Vajiravudh College is a royal establishment and is supported by the royal budget, so the close relationship of Edgewood and Vajiravudh has led to several meetings of Edgewood officials with HRH Princess Sirindhorn. Professor Young's last journey to Bangkok was to include an informal luncheon with the princess. Unfortunately, he took ill, was hospitalized in Korea on his way to Bangkok, and could not meet the princess. Earlier this year, Professor Young received a letter informing him that HRH Princess Sirindhorn was making a special trip to Madison to visit her good friend and to show her interest and support of Edgewood and Vajiravudh's growing cooperative relationship. |
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