By Nedra Rhone

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

When Diana Frances Spencer burst onto the international scene in the 1980s, she seemed every bit a princess. She was a member of one of Britain’s great aristocratic dynasties, attended the best schools and lived, by most accounts, a privileged life. All of which makes it easy to forget that she was barely out of her teens when her reign as Princess of Wales began.

An exhibit about Diana, shown with 8-month-old Charles Spencer, documents her transformation through the years. Althorp Estate

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This gold Spencer tiara features scrolling foliage with tulip and star shaped flowers decorated with diamonds in silver settings. It is believed to have been made in 1767, though the style suggests a date more like 1830. The tiara was remounted in the 20th century.

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Childhood Passport Included among the many items from Diana's childhood is her passport from1968. The two photographs featured were taken by her father, who made a point to shoot their pictures after bathtime when they were super clean.

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With the opening of “Diana: A Celebration” today at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center, Diana’s brother, Charles, ninth Earl Spencer, hopes the exhibition will give visitors a sense of his late sister as a person. “It is very much a celebration of her as a complete human being,” Spencer said this week by phone from his home in South Africa.

More than 150 objects that have been carefully preserved at the ancestral home of Althorp, where Diana was buried in 1997, have toured the world. The wide range of items, including the world’s most famous wedding dress, document Diana’s transformation from girl to princess to mom and humanitarian. Though Spencer doesn’t make a habit of viewing the objects in the exhibition — it is always painful, he said — one of his favorites is the film footage his father shot of him and his three sisters as children. “It includes [Diana’s] baptism and birthday parties. It just brings home the fact that she was once a baby and a little girl and that she grew up to be a princess.”

Diana quickly became an icon as she blossomed into “the people’s princess.” She traveled extensively and devoted herself to what she believed were important causes, Spencer said. And she made such an impression that her legacy continues more than 12 years after her death in Paris.

“She was a unique phenomenon at the time, which was a glamorous humanitarian,” Spencer said.

Diana was never one to flaunt her own achievements, he said, so it’s hard to say what she may have considered her greatest accomplishment. But Spencer thinks it was probably the two people who were closest to her heart. “I think she would pride herself most on being a mother, and I’m sure she would be very proud of her two sons.” Diana also performed charitable work on behalf of children and adults struggling with everything from HIV to homelessness.

While it is gratifying to see Diana so well remembered and to continue preserving her memory through the exhibition supported by the Spencer family and Diana’s Memorial Fund, there are some moments that can’t be relived, Spencer said. “Often when I see something really absurd or ridiculously funny, I think, ‘I wish I could tell Diana about that.’ She had a very well-developed sense of humor, and I miss that the most.”