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This is a story filled with mystery and fantasy, likely presenting more questions than answers. But that is how Her Royal Highness Princess Katherine A. Plantagenet would want it to be.

A couple of months ago, I was mindlessly shopping in Target, when I encountered a friend who complained that The Californian had not published a story about HRH Princess Katherine A. Plantagenet.

To my clueless expression, she explained that a March obituary in The Californian announced the 86-year-old princess’s death. She wanted to know who she was and her connection to Bakersfield. I said I would check it out.

Easier said than done. I embarked on a weeks-long search, beginning at the San Jose funeral home that handled her arrangements. They offered little information, but promised to have the princess’s executor, Donald Bednarz, call me. When no call came, I located Bednarz in Portland, Ore., left repeated messages, but still no call.

The princess’s obituary also appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and The Tribune Star in Terre Haute, Ind. From comments posted on an Internet blog, the obituary aroused curiosity in those cities, as well.

Among the blog postings was one by an anonymous Bakersfield writer claiming the princess had been a family friend named Bub, who told “Fantasy Land” stories and who moved to San Francisco, where letters were dispatched with the return address: HRH.

I hit pay dirt when I found Leah Garchik’s April 1 San Francisco Chronicle column. Bednarz told her he had known the princess for 28 years. They worked together at the Social Security Administration in San Francisco. 

The princess ardently researched her “entitlements,” leading her to assume the name of a 12th century English royal family. “She loved to use her titles among all her friends and she wanted to be remembered in that regard,” said Bednarz, refusing to give her majesty’s real name.

When I called Garchik, she had no clue how the princess was tied to Bakersfield. But on the Legacy.com guest book that accompanied her obituary and photograph on the San Francisco Chronicle Web site, I found comments by Sister Judy Morasci, Mercy Hospital of Bakersfield’s vice president. Six years ago, the princess called Mercy. Her call was given to Sister Morasci.

“She said she once lived here years ago and had been in a bad accident,” Morasci told me. “She was taken to Mercy Hospital where the sisters were so good to her. She wanted us to know how much she appreciated their care.

“After that, she faithfully called me twice a year to ask how I was doing; how the hospital was doing; and tell me she was praying for me,” Morasci recalled, adding there was something strange about the princess’s voice and her apparent obsession with privacy.

Mary Pifer, whose comments also appeared on Legacy.com, bought the princess’s home in Terre Haute in 1990. She told me the princess called at least once a year to check on the house and her family.

“I will never forget her. She was a very kind, colorful, intriguing person,” Pifer said. “Her stories about her past were so interesting. We didn’t know how much was true.”

Father John Cloherty, the priest at St. Anne’s Catholic Church in San Francisco who officiated at her funeral, met the princess and Bednarz when they made her arrangements in 1990. For years, he brought communion to the wheelchair-bound princess’s Redwood City mobile home. He said she moved from San Francisco to Indiana and back to the Bay Area when her health failed.  

Her detailed final instructions called for a Latin Mass at St. Anne’s, which about 25 people attended. Limousines carried the pallbearers and priest to a San Jose cemetery, where the princess was laid to rest in a crypt next her mother. She wore the crown she saved for special occasions.

On April 3, Garchik again wrote  after receiving e-mails from the princess’s former Social Security Administration co-workers.

One recalled: “He said he thoughtfully considered that one should have whatever name one felt comfortable with. He morphed into Katherine and she conducted herself with great dignity for the second half of her life.”

Gil Watson, who headed the Social Security office in Bakersfield until his recent retirement, remembers the dapperly-dressed, very nice gentleman who transformed into the princess.

Could he have been the Bakersfield  family’s friend, Bub?

“Maybe Sir Bub,” he suggested. 

A mystery story by Editorial Page Editor Dianne Hardisty