Valentine Vester, Jerusalem Hotelier, Is Dead at 96

[PyrateJohn]

Valentine Vester, Jerusalem Hotelier, Is Dead at 96


By STEVEN ERLANGER [New York TImes]


PARIS [France] — Valentine Vester, a Yorkshire [England] homemaker
who
went to Jordanian Jerusalem [Isreal] in 1963 to take over a little
hotel, the American Colony, and turned it into one of the city’s
finest, died on Sunday morning [June 16, 2008] at her home in the
hotel. She was 96.


Her death was confirmed by Claire Kosinski, a friend and caretaker
in
Jerusalem.


Mrs. Vester and her husband, Horatio Vester, adapted smoothly to the
Israeli victory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which unified Jerusalem
under Israeli rule. The Vesters were proud that the American Colony,
which had been shot up during the fighting, remained one of the few
places in the rivalrous city where Israelis and Palestinians, Jews,
Muslims and Christians could gather. Their hotel was also a site of
numerous secret talks among Palestinian and Israeli officials.


Mrs. Vester, born Valentine Richmond, married into a wealthy Chicago
[Illinois] family, the Spaffords, who had gone to Jerusalem in 1881
to
live like early Christians, doing good works among the poor and
establishing a children’s hospital. In 1896 the family bought a
former
palace of a pasha, which had been empty, and turned it into a hostel
for pilgrims.


Mrs. Vester and her husband, a Jerusalem-born Spafford heir and
British lawyer who died in the early 1980s, took over the failing
enterprise and made it a commercial success.


“He’d be called the C.E.O. and I’d be called the chief executive of
the kitchen,” Mrs. Vester said in a 2005 interview with The New York
Times. But she also took responsibility for what became the hotel’s
exquisite gardens. “I never thought to create a luxury hotel,” she
said. “Just a real one.”


Many famous people spent time at the hotel, which is also considered
a
haven for foreign correspondents covering the Middle East. Mrs.
Vester
remembered T. E. Lawrence, of Arabia fame, who often stayed there and
played goalie in the soccer games that took place where the swimming
pool is today.


Her own family had strong ties to the Middle East. Her mother’s half
sister was Gertrude Bell, a renowned British archaeologist who helped
create the modern state of Iraq after World War I. Her uncle Ernest
Richmond, an architect, worked on Arab political affairs for the
British who governed Palestine and was strongly anti-Zionist.


“He became a Catholic convert and was violently anti-Semitic,” Mrs.
Vester said in the 2005 interview. “We were brought up very much pro-
Palestinian. I was imbued with the notion that the Arabs were done
down, but I try very hard to take a balanced view.”


She had tart comments about the political failings of both the
Israelis and the Palestinians and no expectation for any quick peace.
She had a special affection for her staff members, who were nearly
all
drawn from the occupied West Bank and mostly Arab East Jerusalem.


“We’ve tried hard to be neutral,” she said. “And we’ve tried not to
let the hotel become some Disney Oriental.”


In recent years, as her health and her eyesight began to fail, Mrs.
Vester stopped traveling and lived in her apartment in the hotel,
which is owned by the family and managed by a Swiss company. But she
often went to its restaurants for meals and gave advice to the staff,
pushing to hire some women, too, despite the disapproval of Mahmoud,
the headwaiter.


Mrs. Vester is survived by two sons, Nicholas of London [England] and
Paul of California, and numerous grandchildren. She will be buried
next to her husband in a plot near the Mount of Olives.