I Hug You, I Hug You Not:...

I Hug You, I Hug You Not: Alice Frazier, the woman who defied British protocol by hugging Queen Elizabeth II when the monarch was in Washington, D.C., last spring, would do it again. Frazier, 67, said in London that she gave the queen the same greeting she gives any guest at her home. “What went through my mind at the time was that she was a woman like I was,” said Frazier, who is chaperoning 31 children touring Britain. “I was glad she came to see me, so I gave her a hug.” But the hug seen around the world may not be repeated: The queen has no plans to meet Frazier during the tour.

Ringer: When Elmer Krohn and Pearl Hall broke off their engagement during World War II, Krohn tossed the ring into the Pacific Ocean. “I had no use for it,” he said. “She was gone.” Nearly 50 years later, the two got back together in Proctor, Minn., and bought an engagement ring with a blue stone just like the original. The two met again through a local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “It took me two weeks sitting and thinking. How do you write to an old boyfriend who I was actually engaged to?” Hall said. The couple figure to get married in the next few months.

A Peace of War: Best-selling novelist Tom Clancy, in Tappahanock, Va., credited Ronald Reagan’s military buildup for forcing the Soviets to change their attitudes about the United States, leading to the demise of Communism and the end of the Cold War. The West has won the most important war in history without a major battle, Clancy boasts: “That’s not too shabby.” One of the author’s thrillers ended up as a Reagan Christmas gift in 1984 and sold 2.5 million copies: “President Reagan’s the guy who made me a best-seller.”

Home Girl: Ivana Trump said she’s happy but wants a little time before marrying Italian industrialist Riccardo Mazzucchelli. No problem. He is willing to wait: “Yes, I am going to propose. Give it a little time,” Mazzucchelli said in New York. The former wife of Donald Trump said her beau has made her “a happy woman. . . . Before, with Donald, I used to mix business with my private life. It wasn’t healthy. A woman should be tough in business but very feminine at home. That’s what I am doing now.”