From Home School To New School

Samantha Lendl learned early in life about the importance of being self-reliant. Her father, James, was a wealthy hotelier who had the lavish La Samanna Hotel on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, yet he refused to let his three young daughters indulge in the luxuries he offered his guests. Instead, he built the family a one-room log cabin in the hills overlooking the hotel. It was only after eight years of living in these cramped quarters that he reluctantly agreed to add a second room.

At the time, Samantha and her sisters didn’t appreciate their father’s parsimony. But today she understands his reluctance to see his children grow up spoiled, like that other hotelier’s daughter we’ve heard so much about recently.

“Our father was enormously proud of us,” she says. “In fact, the word Samanna was a combination of our names:
Samantha, Anouk and Nathalie.”

Read the entire article in the  February 2004 issue