Thailand’s Queen Mother Sirikit has died at age 93

BANGKOK (AP) – Thailand’s Queen Mother Sirikit, who supervised royal projects to help the rural poor, preserve traditional craft-making and protect the environment, died on Friday. She was 93.

The Royal Household Bureau said she died in a hospital in Bangkok, adding that she began suffering from a blood infection on Oct. 17 and despite her medical team’s efforts, her condition did not improve. She suffered a stroke in 2012 and was afterwards largely absent from public life due to declining health. Her husband, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, died in October 2016.

Mourners gathered outside Chulalongkorn Hospital on Saturday morning after hearing the news.

“It is yet again another great loss for the whole nation. I heard about it at 4 a.m. I felt like fainting. The whole world seemed like it had stopped,” said 67-year-old Maneerat Laowalert.

Although overshadowed by her late husband and her son, the current king, Sirikit was beloved and influential in her own right. Her portrait was displayed in homes, offices and public spaces across Thailand and her Aug. 12 birthday was celebrated as Mother’s Day. Her activities ranged from helping Cambodian refugees to saving some of the country’s once-lush forests from destruction.

The Thai monarchy traditionally has avoided playing an open role in politics, but in recent decades of political upheaval, marked by two military takeovers and several rounds of bloody street protests, speculation grew about Sirikit’s views and her behind the scenes influence. When she publicly attended the 2008 funeral of a protester killed during a clash with police, many saw it as her taking a side in the political schism.

Sirikit Kitiyakara was born into a rich, aristocratic family in Bangkok on Aug. 12, 1932, the year absolute monarchy was replaced by a constitutional system. Both of her parents were related to earlier kings of the current Chakri dynasty.

She attended schools in wartime Bangkok, the target of Allied air raids, and after World War II moved with her diplomat father to France where he served as ambassador.

At 16, she met Thailand’s newly crowned king in Paris, where she was studying music and languages. Their friendship blossomed after Bhumibol suffered a near-fatal car accident and she moved to Switzerland, where he was studying, to help care for him. The king courted her with poetry and composed a waltz titled, “I Dream of You.”

The pair married in 1950, and at a coronation ceremony later the same year both vowed to “reign with righteousness for the benefit and happiness of the Siamese (Thai) people.”

The couple had four children: current King Maha Vajiralongkorn, and princesses Ubolratana, Sirindhorn and Chulabhorn.

During their early married life, the Thai royals crisscrossed the world as goodwill ambassadors and forged personal ties with world leaders. Malaysian Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan expressed his “heartfelt condolences” on her death as he opened a meeting with his Southeast Asian counterparts in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

But by the early 1970s, the king and queen turned most of their energies to Thailand’s domestic problems, including rural poverty, opium addiction in hill tribes and a communist insurgency.

Each year, the couple traveled around the countryside while also officiating at more than 500 royal, religious and state ceremonies.

The queen, an impeccable dresser and avid shopper, also relished climbing hills and visiting simple villages where older women called her “daughter.”

Thousands raised their problems to her, ranging from marital squabbles to serious diseases, and the queen and her assistants took up many personally.

While some in Bangkok gossiped about her involvement in palace intrigues and her lavish lifestyle, her popularity in the countryside endured.

“Misunderstandings arise between people in rural areas and the rich, so-called civilized people in Bangkok. People in rural Thailand say they are neglected, and we try to fill that gap by staying with them in remote areas,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press in 1979.

Royal development projects were set up across Thailand, some of them initiated and directly supervised by the queen.

In 1976, the queen launched a foundation aimed at increasing the income of poor rural families and preserving dying crafts. The foundation, known as SUPPORT, has trained thousands of villagers in silk-weaving, jewelry-making, painting, ceramics and other traditional crafts.

She also set up wildlife breeding centers, “open zoos,” and hatcheries to save endangered sea turtles. Her Forest Loves Water and Little House in the Forest projects sought to demonstrate the economic gains of preserving forest cover and water sources.

While royalty elsewhere had only ceremonial or symbolic roles, Queen Sirikit believed the monarchy was a vital institution in Thailand.

“There are some in the universities who think the monarchy is obsolete. But I think Thailand needs an understanding monarch,” she said in the 1979 interview. “At the call, ‘The king is coming,’ thousands will gather.

“The mere word king has something magic in it. It is wonderful.”

___

Associated Press journalists David Rising in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Denis D. Gray served as longtime Bangkok bureau chief before his retirement.