After 50 years at Raffles Hotel Singapore, historian Leslie Danker is a walking history archive
Published on
11 Dec 2022
Published by
The Straits Times
SINGAPORE – With its old-world charm and colonial architecture, Raffles Hotel Singapore in Beach Road has a history intertwined with that of the nation.
The job of Mr Leslie Danker, the hotel’s resident historian, is to share the colonial-era establishment’s illustrious past with guests. As its longest-serving employee, having worked there for half a century, the storyteller himself has a place in its grand narrative.
The 83-year-old joined the hotel in 1972 as a maintenance supervisor, and has taken on roles such as overseeing events, managing catering in the F&B department and being a front desk staff in the 1970s and 1980s.
His career took a turn in 1989, when he was tasked with bringing the then-chief executive Richard Helfer on a tour of the hotel before its first restoration. Mr Danker’s in-depth knowledge of the hotel so impressed Mr Helfer that he was appointed site supervisor for the restoration, in the hope that his memories could help retain the elements that make the building special.
In 2014, Mr Danker was appointed the hotel’s resident historian, and has since seen it through a second restoration between 2017 and 2019.
His love affair with the hotel began in his teens, when the St Joseph’s Institution student walked past it every day on the way to school and was enthralled by its facade. After he graduated and spent 15 years as a social worker, he walked up to the hotel front desk one day in 1972, and asked the manager for a job. The rest is, well, history.
These days, he functions as the hotel’s walking history archive, conducting history tours for guests as well as organisations, companies and schools.
Mr Danker, who is married to a retiree and has two children and two grandchildren, says: “I love having the opportunity to interact with guests and share the history of hotel, and of Singapore, with them. When guests tell me I make the walls come alive with history, it makes me so happy.”
He has also published two memoirs – Memoirs Of A Raffles Original (2010) and A Life Intertwined (2020). The latter weaves details from his own life with little-known facts about the hotel.
Some of these vignettes include how the late American superstar Michael Jackson once stayed in the hotel in 1993, accompanied by his close friend, British-American actress Elizabeth Taylor. The King of Pop, an animal lover, was unable to visit the Singapore Zoo, so arrangements were made to take Ah Meng, the attraction’s famous orang utan, to the hotel’s pool to meet the singer and Taylor.
To mark Mr Danker’s 50th career anniversary in March, the hotel launched a museum showcase in its library, displaying never-before-seen memorabilia from Mr Danker’s private collection, such as a hotel room rate card from 1985. A specially crafted cocktail, called Danker 1972, was also concocted and served at its Long Bar as a nod to his contributions.
This celebration held great meaning for Mr Danker, who says: “I am happy to have stayed throughout the years, and would choose to do it all over again.”
Mr Christian Westbeld, the hotel’s managing director, says: “Mr Danker is a pillar, and a personified icon of stability, of Raffles Hotel Singapore. He is an inspiration to colleagues and a celebrity to our guests. Over the years, he has formed very deep and meaningful relationships with returning guests, spanning generations.”
Asked if he has any pearls of wisdom for younger workers, Mr Danker quotes a line from the T.S. Elliot poem Little Gidding: “We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.”
He adds: “My own journey has been guided by my love of history and learning, so I would advise my younger friends to have an open mind and be brave when finding out their own career journey’s purpose and meaning.”
Source: The Straits Times © Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Reproduced with permission.
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