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Name: LETHAM, Thomas William

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Nee: son of Thomas Edward Letham

Birth Date: 31.8.1929 Billericay, Essex

Death Date: 8.2.2014 Cranbrook, Kent

First Date: 1930

Last Date: 1975

Profession: Hotelier, Block Hotels and Hilton International

Area: Nairobi, Nanyuki

Married: 1952 Valerie Benbow b. 1932 Hendon, London

Children: Deborah (1954); Patrick (1963); James (1965)

Book Reference: EAWL

War Service: Kenya Regt. 1951

School: Prince of Wales School, Nairobi

General Information:

1952 Asst. Manager at the Norfolk under Brian Burrows, served in the Kenya Regt. on active service until 1955. March 1955 moved to the Mawingo Hotel (Now the Mt. Kenya Safari Club) and stayed there for 2 years and returned to the Norfolk in 1957. Moved back and forth between the Norfolk and New Stanley first as Assistant and then as Manager. In 1968 joined Hilton International and in 1969 became GM of the Nairobi Hilton. Stayed there until 1975 when he was transferred to UK to become GM of the S/Avon Hilton where he spent 8 years until retirement. In retirement joined the Wellington Hospital, London.
mini-Sitrep 46  Tom was born in the UK in 1929 and travelled to Kenya with his parents in late 1930 where his father was employed at The Old Stanley Hotel (later to become the New Stanley Hotel). One of his earliest memories was riding around in a rickshaw. In 1937/38 the family moved to Beira in Portuguese East Africa and he attended school at St George’s College, Salisbury, and Umtali High School before returning in the late 1940s to the Prince of Wales in Nairobi. By this time, his father was managing The Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi, now under the Block’s management. He left in 1947 to study hotel management in Switzerland at the Ecole Hotelier in Lausanne and after completing the course moved to The Grosvenor House in London for six months before returning to Kenya in late 1950 where he prepared Block Hotels in 1951. 
He joined the Kenya Regiment on 12th June 1951 and enjoyed the training camps and week day evening meetings. The early event of 1952 was the visit of HRH Princess Elizabeth, just a few days before she became Queen. She opened the new Kenya Regiment HQ on Ngong Road on 2nd February and the photo of her inspecting the Guard of Honour, in which Tom was the right marker, appeared in many magazines and surprisingly enough, forty years later, Val was at an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London depicting the Queen’s travels and spotted the picture now enlarged and mounted on a hardboard backing. She drew it to the attention of one of the organisers and was delighted when he said he would let her have it after the exhibition closed. It is now reframed and hanging in their home. 
It was on a visit to Arusha in northern Tanganyika that he met Val who was working at the New Arusha Hotel. There followed many visits between Nairobi and Arusha over the next year or so before they married in All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi in November 1952. Just after the Emergency started, instead of finding himself working at the Norfolk Hotel, he was deployed on Emergency Service for the next three years. On release they moved to the Mawingo Hotel (now the Mount Kenya Safari Club) with their one year old daughter, Debbie. It was still a troubled area and he got used to staff being taken away for questioning or detention.
They returned to Nairobi in 1957 and for the next ten years he worked between The Norfolk and New Stanley and enjoyed golf at The Royal Nairobi Golf Club. With the addition of Patrick and James in 1963 and 1965, their family was complete. Changes in the hotel world developed with the interest of Hilton International who were keen to take over the new hotel being built on a prime site in the centre of Nairobi. This was accomplished and Tom was appointed their first General Manager in 1968. After an indoctrination course in Montreal he returned for the opening in 1969. He was then involved with the construction of Taita Hills and Salt Lick Lodges in Tsavo National Park which proved popular with both tourists and local visitors....[In 1975 Tom took over as General Manager of the Stratford Upon Avon Hilton.]In 1983, it was on the move again as Stratford Hilton was sold and Tom changed careers joining the Wellington Hospital in St John’s Wood as non-medical director for the next eleven years. They then retired to Weybridge enjoying golf and as a volunteer at Brooklands Motor Museum. Tom was also an official on the 2002 Census, and together with Val they invigilated examinations at Kingston University and Esher College. They moved to Goudhurst, Kent in 2007 where again he became involved in the British Legion and was Chairman of the Cranbrook Probus Society in 2012. Sadly, he suffered an aortic aneurysm in late January, followed by pneumonia and he died on 8th February 2014. At his wish, he was cremated at a private family service and his ashes are buried in St. Mary’s churchyard, Lamberhurst, overlooking the golf course.

 

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