Hotel Managers’ Wives Adjust to a Life of Ease

They rarely have to cook a meal, clean the house or iron a shirt. And when they arrive at an airport, it’s often to a waiting car that whisks them to one of the city’s best hotels, where they entertain lavishly and dine on international cuisine.

They are the wives of hotel managers. They pay for these luxuries with lives that often lack privacy, by having husbands who are on call 24 hours a day, and sometimes with loneliness.

“You have to be trained to live a life of complete ease,” says Romayne Karl, wife of John Karl, general manager of the Sheraton Maui and senior vice president for Sheraton Hotels of the Pacific.

Karl has spent 35 years as a hotel wife, raised five children, run for public office and hosted her own television talk show. She admits that she loves the amenities that come along with her husband’s position.

Cooking as a Hobby

“I love to cook as a hobby,” she says, “not as a job.” Because she and her husband have always lived on hotel property, she says it’s been necessary to have her own identity. But she gave up the idea of a career eventually, because she was always “starting all over again” with each move to a hotel.

“Many wives can’t handle the loneliness,” she says. “Often you have no neighbors and know only your husband’s subordinates, so you have to make yourself independent and fall back on your own resources.”

Karl does volunteer work and teaches English as a second language to students at Maui Hui Malama.

Still, she says she’s loved something about every place they’ve lived--from Fort Worth to New Orleans, Boston and Baltimore.

Nina von Imhof, wife of Maui Prince Hotel’s general manager, Chris von Imhof, has not made many moves in her 20-year marriage. In fact, moving to Maui was the first real one.

A dancer, von Imhof was Miss Alaska in 1963. She met her husband when he was the director of tourism for the state, and they spent much of his career running a ski resort.

“It was a wonderful, small community,” she says. Her children, three boys now 18, 15 and 8, were able to live relatively normal lives with woods and nature just outside the door.

Unlike the Karls, the von Imhofs live off the property, and Nina performs with convention shows, takes dance classes and teaches at the Maui Youth Theater.

Alberta de Jetley doesn’t care if she never sees the inside of another hotel. At 23, she married Tony de Jetley, a veteran hotel man 22 years her senior. The couple spent their entire marriage, until he died in 1981, in the hotel business.

“I didn’t realize how artificial our life was until I’d left it,” says the island woman, mother of two boys, who grew up on Lanai. But she sees their life together as spontaneous and often exciting. “Sometimes I miss it, but I could never go back now that I’ve had a taste of privacy.”

De Jetley remembers arriving at the Hotel Hana Maui, where she and Tony spent most of their marriage, getting off the plane and being taken immediately to a cocktail party. The couple gave three cocktail parties every week for the first three years they were there. After that, the number dropped to two a week.

Because food and entertaining were always done at the hotel, she only learned to cook one meal. They had it every time someone came to the house they occupied near the hotel. It was a broiled beef tenderloin with garlic bread and a green salad.

Jeanine de Roode, on the other hand, prefers living in hotels. She is the wife of Maui Inter-Continental Wailea’s general manager, Fred de Roode.

Not having to clean, cook or do laundry has left her with more time for her children, Alex, 10, and Anne-Laure, 7, her husband and friends.

The de Roodes met in Paris and lived in private quarters until Fred was transferred to a hotel in New York City. That was when Jeanine says she started enjoying the life.

“I didn’t have to iron,” the Frenchwoman says. “It is easier when you don’t have to do all those things and you have the time for the children.”

The de Roodes entertain a great deal. For small dinner parties they use one of the hotel’s dining rooms or have the kitchen send food to their suite.

The couple were in Paris for four years, in New York City for 3 1/2, and they have been on Maui another 3 1/2 years. Jeanine loves moving to different locations and being able to live there long enough to get to know the people and customs.

She feels the life style is hardest on her husband and children. Fred, like all the managers, is on call all the time. And while the children have access to three swimming pools, it’s difficult to live where there is no neighborhood in which to form childhood friendships. On weekends, they have children over to the hotel and try to maintain a more normal existence.