‘Unfailingly polite’: Williamsburg Inn employees reminisce on Queen Elizabeth II’s whirlwind 2007 visit

As people across the world revisit memories of Queen Elizabeth II, who died last week after 70 years on the throne, a few employees at the Williamsburg Inn can look back and say that they played a part in history.

In 2007, when the queen visited Virginia to mark the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, she made a stop in Colonial Williamsburg where she stayed at the iconic Williamsburg hotel for the second time.

For the Williamsburg Inn’s general manager, Leslie Shotwell, who was on hand for the visit in 2007, it was the experience of a lifetime.

“The lead up to the visit was very intense,” Shotwell said. “Everything was very secret. There was a tiny group that knew [about the visit].”

Williamsburg Inn staff spent a “minimum” of a year preparing for the meticulously planned and extremely compacted 23 hours that the queen spent at the hotel, Shotwell said. During the planning process, members of the royal staff made secret visits to the hotel to look at the site and to discuss the schedule as well as make special requests on the queen’s behalf.

Ahead of the queen’s arrival, the Williamsburg Inn was tasked with retrofitting a housekeeping closet in the corridor near the queen’s suite into a pantry, which they stocked with requested teas and other favorite items. They also were asked to provide a chair in the bathroom for the queen to use while she put on makeup, as well as to put down a couple of bath mats on the floor of the bathroom.

“Being the Williamsburg Inn, we didn’t put down bath mats,” Shotwell said. “We had a custom carpet made to fit the exact dimensions and the turns and twists of the bathroom. So that bathroom became carpeted for her stay.”

The hotel even brought out brand new towels and linens for the queen to use during the duration of her stay. They did not, however, put in a brand new toilet, though a long-circulated rumor tends to say otherwise.

Shotwell isn’t quite sure whatever became of the royal bathroom carpet, though it’s likely in storage somewhere. The towels and linens probably went into the rotation for other guests at the inn, none of whom could ever have guessed that they might be using the same washcloth Queen Elizabeth II herself used.

As the hotel prepared for the visit, there were plenty of sleepless nights and long, early morning phone calls as the staff worked to ensure that every detail was just right.

“I remember many nights waking up suddenly and thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, we don’t have an answer for X,’” Shotwell said. “So I would call [then-president of hospitality John Hallowell]’s office, knowing I’d get his voicemail and I’d say, ‘Mr. Hallowell, it’s 1 o’clock in the morning, this is Leslie. Don’t forget to ask the palace about such and such.’

“Then I’d hang up and like two hours later, I would check my voicemail and it would be Mr. Hallowell saying, ‘Leslie, it’s John. It’s 2 o’clock in the morning. Don’t forget to put on your list that we still have an outstanding issue with [this].’”

Travis Brust, the inn’s executive chef and food and beverage director, remembers just how much work went into the queen’s 23 hours at the hotel. He recalls sleepless nights and countless weeks of preparation.

As a then-sous chef, much of Brust’s time during the visit was spent preparing the extensive menu for the visit’s 150-person sit-down luncheon as well as in-room meals.

“Me and three other cooks pulled an all-nighter the night before to meticulously make all of the heirloom tomato roses for the salad,” he said. “We had to make each one and we had to stuff them specifically with these very delicate leaves to make all the salads. It took one person 8-10 minutes to make one rose, so it was hours and hours. We knew we couldn’t make them the day before so we would have to start at like 2 in the morning.”

Brust remembers getting his first glimpse of the queen with other back-of-the-house staff as the horse-drawn carriage carrying the queen came clattering up the drive. For some of the employees, this moment was the first they had heard about the visit.

“When she was pulling up in the carriage in front of the hotel, we fully let the cat out of the bag to the staff,” he said. “So we all came out and were looking out [two windows in what is now the Rockefeller Room], all piled up so everyone got a chance to see her.”

Despite the many, many long hours and all of the pressure, Brust said that it’s “pretty awesome to be able to say that we’re one of the very few people in the country to be able to do what we did.”

For Shotwell, one of the most special parts of the visit was the queen herself, who was unfailingly polite and attentive to everyone around her.

“Everybody that worked with her was just so lovely,” Shotwell added. “Her whole staff, the people of Scotland Yard, everyone. ... You sort of got a sense of who she was by the people around her.”

The Williamsburg Inn seemed to impress the queen just as much in return. According to Shotwell, who worked with the queen’s aide Angela Kelly in the lead-up to the visit, the queen’s first visit in the 1950s stood out so much in her mind that she recalled the hotel vividly.

“Angela Kelly said that the queen had described Williamsburg in such great detail to her that when she pulled up to the front of the hotel, she felt like she’d already been here,” Shotwell said. “[It’s] moments like that when you realize that here’s a woman who has seen the world remembered us from close to 50 years prior when she was a very young woman. She remembered us so fondly that she was able to describe us to somebody else in a way that Angela felt like she’d been here.”

During the duration of the visit, the staff did their best to stay “very much in the moment so we didn’t let it just wash over us and go, ‘Okay, next thing,’” said Shotwell. “... Nothing in my mind will ever [match up].”

At least, not until the next royal visit, perhaps?

“Perhaps,” Shotwell allowed with a laugh. “I think by the next 50th anniversary of Jamestown, I’ll be retired.”

Sian Wilkerson, sian.wilkerson@pilotonline.com, 757-342-6616