Henry Kimelman, a V.I. businessman-turned philanthropist who served as U.S. ambassador to Haiti during the Carter administration, died yesterday. He was 88.
Kimelman enjoyed a rich and varied career in the Virgin Islands and beyond, in both business and public service. He was an owner and general manager of the Virgin Isle Hotel, the island’s largest hotel in the 1950s. He was a founder of the West Indies Corporation, a major import firm. And he was the Virgin Islands’ first commissioner of commerce.
On the national scene he served as chief of staff to former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall during the Johnson administration. He was also finance chairman of Democrat George McGovern’s presidential campaign in 1972, a position of prominence that earned him a spot on former President Richard Nixon’s notorious enemies list.
And in what he viewed as the highlight of his career, he served as ambassador to Haiti during the regime of Francois "Baby Doc" Duvalier. He used that honorific "ambassador" with much pride during the latter years of his life.
On St. Thomas today Kimelman might be best known for his philanthropic endeavors–he and his wife of 66 years, Charlotte, were the lead donors for the Charlotte Kimelman Cancer Institute at the Schneider Regional Medical Center; the founding donors of the Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands; and major contributors to the Antilles school, where the library and a scholarship program for low-income St. Thomians bear Kimelman’s name.
Born in New York City on January 21, 1921, Henry Kimelman was the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Despite being raised in middle-class comfort in Brooklyn, his father, a textile manufacturer, went bankrupt during the depression. Kimelman thus worked to cover tuition costs at New York University, where he majored in business administration.
His plans to embark on a career in business were delayed, however, by America’s entry into the Second World War. Four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Kimelman enlisted in the Navy and served as a supply officer throughout the war. While part of that service was in the distant Aleutian Islands, Kimelman later noted the irony that he never actually set sail on an ocean-going vessel until 1952, when he and his wife crossed the Atlantic on the luxury liner Ile de France.
A few months before Pearl Harbor, Kimelman met his future wife on a blind date. She was 19; he was 20. Their subsequent marriage not only transformed his personal life; it also set the direction of his professional life.
Charlotte Kimelman’s father, Sidney Kessler, owned a rum distillery on St. Thomas. He was entranced with the island’s beauty and decided to build a hotel there. The 120-room Virgin Isle Hotel opened in 1950. It was larger and far costlier than originally planned and, with so much at stake in its success, both Kimelman and his brother-in-law Elliot Fishman, were enlisted to help run it. Though he had no training in the hotel business, within a year Kimelman was the hotel’s general manager.
Kimelman said he never worked harder than those early years of the hotel’s existence, when the island’s tourism industry was still nascent. His 16-hour days began in his office but ended in the hotel’s dining room and bar, where he mingled with the guests. During the ’51-’52 winter season, when the hotel was fighting to remain solvent, Kimelman went four months without ever leaving the hilltop where the hotel was located.
But it was a glamorous existence as well. Dinner at the hotel was black tie two nights a week, and the fashionable clientele included movie stars and prominent politicians, some of whom would play a role in Kimelman’s later career.
A natural marketer, Kimelman came up with a gimmick to highlight the island’s dependably good weather. He provided every guest with an insurance policy from Lloyd’s of London, guaranteeing that their room would be free on any day that the mean temperature dropped below 70 degrees. The hotel never had to honor that pledge.
During that same period Kimelman and Fishman started an import business, Henry Elliot Limited, that supplied numerous brands of liquor and other products to Main Street retailers. The partnership later dissolved, and Kimelman went on to found the West Indies Corporation, which remains a prominent island business concern.
In 1960 Kimelman negotiated a deal with the Hilton hotel chain to lease the Virgin Isle Hotel. Freed from that responsibility, he accepted a position as the island’s first commissioner of commerce under Gov. Ralph Paiewonsky. Kimelman proved an aggressive promoter of island tourism, traveling widely and launching a national advertising campaign. During his three-year tenure, tourism revenues doubled from $25 million to $50 million a year.
Kimelman attributed his mid-career interest in public service to his admiration for John F. Kennedy. He was thus open to another call for service in 1968 from Stewart Udall, a Kennedy disciple, who brought Kimelman to Washington as his chief of staff during the final year of the Johnson administration.
The Kimelmans ended up buying a second home in Washington and remained there for the next dozen years. Of the many friendships Kimelman made during that period, the most important was with George McGovern, then a Democratic senator from South Dakota.
McGovern happened to be visiting the Kimelmans at their hillside home on St. Thomas in July of 1969, when the news broke that Senator Edward M. Kennedy had driven a car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, killing a young woman passenger. Both men were quick to recognize that the incident would likely derail Kennedy’s plans to run for president in 1972 and, before the stay was over, McGovern made the decision to seek the nomination.
McGovern was the longest of long shots–the famous Las Vegas oddsmaker Jimmy the Greek offered 500-1 odds against him at the outset of the campaign. But he upset frontrunner Edmund Muskie and ended up the Democratic candidate, only to lose badly to Nixon in that year of the Watergate scandal.
Kimelman oversaw an operation that raised $33 million for the campaign and, remarkable for a losing presidential candidacy, finished in the black.
In an interview shortly after he secured the Democratic nomination, McGovern told Life Magazine, that in 1969 nearly everyone he knew, including his staff, tried to talk him out of seeking the nomination. "But my friend Henry Kimelman … was strongly for it," McGovern said. "Without his zealous encouragement I might not have attempted it at all."
Kimelman’s prominence did not go unnoticed in the opposite camp. When the Senate Watergate Committee released the Nixon administration’s so-called "enemies list" in June of 1973, Kimelman’s name was among the 200 people identified as political opponents.
Kimelman took one more shot at presidential king making in 1976, serving as finance chairman for Senator Frank Church’s campaign for the Democratic nomination. Church won a number of primaries but lost the nomination to Jimmy Carter.
With close friends like McGovern and Church on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kimelman was well positioned to seek an ambassadorship, and in 1980 he was named ambassador to Haiti by Jimmy Carter.
He plunged into the post with gusto, soon concluding that the corrupt and repressive regime of Francois "Baby Doc" Duvalier, offered more potential for Haiti than any of the likely alternatives. "Duvalier was bad, but a hardline military government could be far worse," Kimelman wrote in a memoir some years later.
But his efforts to nudge the Duvalier regime in a more democratic direction were brought up short by Carter’s defeat in the 1980 elections. Kimelman’s tenure in Haiti ended after less than a year, one of his greatest disappointments.
The ensuing 12 years of Republican rule put a second ambassadorial appointment out of reach. But Kimelman became a founding member and officer of the Council of American Ambassadors, a globetrotting group of former ambassadors, many of whom became good friends.
In his later years Kimelman spent his time on personal investing, enhancing his fortune, and philanthropy. He took great satisfaction in launching the Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands and was proudly present at the dedication of the Charlotte Kimelman Cancer Institute, which he considered his most important philanthropic endeavor.
Kimelman is survived by his wife, Charlotte; his three children, Suzi Edwards and Donald and John Kimelman; and seven grandchildren.

Funeral services are scheduled for Nov. 17 at the Hebrew Congregation of St. Thomas Synagogue, with burial to follow at the Hebrew Congregation Cemetery in Altona, across from Western Cemetery. Service begins at 10 a.m.