KOTA KINABALU: Sabrina Stawin's family has fond memories of late Queen Elizabeth II, and that sweet moment was captured in a photo.
The image of Sabrina's father Stawin Laukang greeting the Queen during a reception was the only one left in the family's collection.
It was taken during his trip to London in 1973, to represent the Southeast Asia visually impaired community for a two-week exhibition.
Stawin became blind when he was just one-year-old after being downed with chickenpox in 1943 during the Second World War Japanese's occupation in the then North Borneo.
Stawin, who was then 29 when he visited London, had first met the Queen during her visit to a blind farmer's handicraft exhibition in Tanjung Aru here.
The Queen was on a special tour to Sabah in 1972, and the blind community was invited to demonstrate their baskets weaving skills.
"My father was a talkative person and he was very eager to strike up a conversation with the Queen.
"The Queen was impressed because from all the blind persons around, only my father had the courage to speak English, which he learnt from Babanau, an Englishman, who was also visually impaired," said Sabrina.
The Queen's visit to the handicraft centre was also documented in a photo which was published in the New Straits Times on Sept 9, 2022.
"In that photo, my mother Mosia Sitimon was in the background with my oldest brother who was still a toddler staring at Prince Philip.
"My mother also suffered the same fate like my father, and she lost her vision after a bout of chickenpox and high fever when she was one-year-old," said Sabrina who is the third child from five siblings.
She said Babanau, who was a representative from the Royal Commonwealth Society for Blind, was assigned to Sabah in the 1970s to oversee the blind community's progress
"He (Babanau) was also responsible for bringing my father to London, after the meeting with the Queen.
"One of the reasons that he came here was also to establish the Wallace Blind Centre in Tuaran, a place where I grew up," said Sabrina.
In London, she said the Queen had invited her father for luncheon at the Buckingham Palace.
"My father took a lot of photos in the palace including with the then young Prince Charles (now King Charles III).
"But, all the photos that my father took and brought back from London were lost (except for one) when my family moved to Wallace Blind Centre in Tuaran from Inanam.
"According to my father, the Queen had offered him to stay in London under the care of the blind society.
"She told my father that education and housing would be provided for my family, but my father, who had special abilities in weaving, growing vegetables and breeding rabbits, turned down the offer.
"He was worried because he can't read, and he would not be able to find his way home if he got lost in London.
"He was also afraid of his safety because living in a foreign country could be challenging for a blind man," said Sabrina.