Valentine Richmond Vester, Age 96

By Andrew I. Killgore


	Valentine Vester in her apartment at the American Colony Hotel in 2005 (Rina Castelnuovo/The New York Times/Redux).

JERUSALEM is regarded as the center of the world by many people and the storied American Colony Hotel is a distinguished part of that center, so the death on June 15 of the proprietor of the American Colony, the witty and highly intelligent Valentine Vester, is a notable event. People all over the world who, going back many decades, have stayed at the American Colony or met the proprietor will feel a sadly nostalgic sense of loss.

It all began with an epiphany of Anna Spafford after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. Possessed of a powerful personality, this wife of a prominent Chicago lawyer “saw” a vision of Jesus Christ returning to Jerusalem in 1900. So in 1881 the Spaffords and members of the Larsen family from Chicago and from Sweden made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to stay.

Mrs. Vester was born Valentine Richmond in England, the daughter of a wealthy Royal Navy officer. She married Horatio Vester, a grandson of Anna Spafford, who had wed Frederic Vester in Jerusalem. When Horatio Vester’s mother, the redoubtable Bertha Spafford Vester, died in the early 1960s, he had to terminate his law practice in London and get to Jerusalem to keep the American Colony Hotel going.

Valentine Vester, of course, went with him. Her son Nicholas described her move to Jerusalem as “a colossal wrench,” but she was a powerful personality who “adapted to everything that was thrown at her.” Nicholas Vester added, “She and Horatio made this place a global landmark by their wit and by being interesting enough that people would travel a long way to see them, and were flattered by their attention.”

Many famous people have stayed at the American Colony, from Lawrence of Arabia of World War I fame to Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain who currently keeps an office there as the Quartet’s special envoy. The Vesters maintained the hotel’s “neutral” image between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Valentine Vester herself played a key point in this by her intemperate hostility to extremists on both sides, summed up by the phrase, “a plague on both their houses.”

Mrs. Vester is survived by two sons, Nicholas of London and Paul of California.

Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.