Quiet Remembrances For Diana
Quiet remembrances are going on all over the world for Princess Diana, who was killed in a Paris car crash three years ago Thursday.
Diana is being remembered in prayers at Westminster Abbey, where her funeral service took place.
At Kensington Palace, the focus of mass public mourning in 1997, loyal fans are returning with flowers.
Remembrances are a private issue for the royal family.
Diana's 18-year-old son Prince William is away from home. He went to Belize right after school to begin a year of traveling and working before starting college. Prince Harry, 15, was with his father, Prince Charles, at Balmoral, the royal family's private estate in the Scottish Highlands. It was at Balmoral, on Aug. 31, 1997, that William and Harry first heard of their mother's death.
A memorial is being held Harrods, the London department store owned by Mohammed Al-Fayed, whose son Dodi died in the crash with Diana.
A steady stream of admirers has made their way to the Paris traffic tunnel where she met her end.
The Flame of Liberty, a gilded statue above the Place D'Alma tunnel, serves as a kind of unofficial shrine to Diana.
The investigation is officially closed. But an appeals court will rule next month on a request by Fayed's father to reopen it.
At Kensington Palace, reports CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier, the crowds are smaller. There are fewer poems and teddy bears. But a dedicated following still make the pilgrimage.
Says one visitor, "We all miss her very much. My daughter comes every year, and I come twice…"
A playground and memorial walk have opened nearby in the name of the late princess. But Diana's fans want something more.
"I'd like to see a small fountain here. It doesn't have to be large," says campaigner Gill Marseilles. "After all, it was promised last year, and I'd have thought in a year something could have happened. And I feel very sad that it isn't here, and I think a lot of people are sad as well."
Such supporters accuse the royal family and the British government of trying to forget the outspoken divorcee princess, and the world's grief over her passing.
Diana's sons, spending the sad anniversary with friends and family, simply say: It's time to let go.
"The general mood of the third anniversary is, Diana's dead. Let her rest in peace," says royal photographer Arthur Edwards.
"Three years ago, yes, there was big grieving, and it was a terrible moment, but unfortunately now I think it's becoming a thing for the tourists now rather than the British. We need to just move on."
Princess Diana's survivors have moved on. Prince Charles has brought Camilla Parker Bowles out of the shadows, and Diana's sons are on the brink of adulthood. They all remember her in private.
But many of the millions of people who had never met Diana, yet grieved her loss, still pay their respects in very public ways.
They still arrive by the busload at Althorp House, the Spencer family estate where Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, assembled an exhibition in her memory.
In its third year, the exhibition has had little press attention, "yet the visitors are still coming," said Althorp spokeswoman Shelley-Anne Claircourt. "It's really remarkable that the numbers are still so high."