He became a
bellhop at the Waldorf Astoria, where he remained until Jan. 31, 2017, a month
before that storied Park Avenue hotel closed for a six-year gut
renovation. On the day he retired after 51 years, he was its longest-serving
employee and probably the longest-serving living bellhop in Manhattan,
according to his union, the Hotel Trades Council.
Mr.
Elidrissi died at 74 on July 6 at a hospital in Queens, where he lived. The
cause was pancreatic cancer, his daughter Rajaa Elidrissi said.
“When I
started, bellmen and bellhops were called ‘boys,’ but that’s not OK any more,”
Mr. Elidrissi told Condé Nast Traveler in 2015. “Also, we had to call
all guests ‘Madame’ and ‘Sir,’ even if we knew their names. You know why?
Because if the guest came in with their spouse and we already knew their names,
the spouses would get suspicious as to why they’d been here already.”
After he
was hired in 1966, Mr. Elidrissi saw much change. The bellhops’ uniforms
evolved. The Waldorf’s landmark 47-story building, for decades the world’s
tallest hotel, underwent several makeovers. Even the hyphen connecting the two
family names — a vestige of the entente between the descendants of William
Waldorf Astor and of John Jacob Astor that had led to the hotel’s creation —
vanished. But the white-glove grandeur that defined the hotel and made it the
signature Manhattan way-station for presidents, princes and celebrities
remained unchanged, he said.
“When it
comes to service, the clientele doesn’t matter, whether it’s a former president
or a new couple staying for the first time,” Mr. Elidrissi said. “It’s your
responsibility to have the same level of impeccable service for everyone.”
Jallali
Elidrissi was born on Aug. 25, 1946, in Temara, just south of Rabat on the
Atlantic coast, to Fatima Abbou, a homemaker, and Ahmed Elidrissi, a fruit and
bread vendor. He had a high school education in Morocco and took some college
classes at night after he arrived in the United States on a work visa early in
1966.
In addition
to his daughter Rajaa, an associate producer for the news website Vox, he is
survived by another daughter, Fouzia Michel, a patient advocate, from his first
marriage to Khadija Elidrissi, which ended in divorce; his wife, Souad (Azmi)
Elidrissi, whom he married in 1991; and a granddaughter. A son, Aziz, died in
an accident while serving in the Marines in 2007.
“He loved
acting and music, but knew it would be hard for him to have a career path in
that as an immigrant in the ’60s,” Rajaa Elidrissi said of her father. “He also
had to send remittances to his family in Morocco. He sought out help from a
Catholic Charities organization, and they helped him out with finding the
Waldorf.”
He was
hired at the hotel on April 21, 1966, at $1.23 an hour (about $10.50 in today’s
money) and started by rotating through various jobs. He asked for a tryout as a
bellman. “Almost 50 years later, there I remain,” he said in 2015.
He was such
a fixture at the Waldorf, his daughter said, that he played a bellhop as an
extra — no rehearsals necessary — in several films, including “The
Out-of-Towners” (1970), with Jack Lemmon; “Scent of a Woman” (1992), with Al
Pacino; and “Analyze This” (1999), with Robert De Niro.
After he
retired, Mr. Elidrissi intended to write a tell-some book. It was to include,
he said, his reflections, however brief, on every president he had met, from
Lyndon B. Johnson to Barack Obama. “He started writing stories down, and I
would transcribe them, but we didn’t get to finish,” his daughter Rajaa said.
He had plenty to tell.
Such as
when Lucille Ball demanded breakfast at 5 a.m., or when Eddie Fisher ordered 40
sandwiches for friends after a late-night supper club performance, or when
Jerry Lewis checked in at 3 a.m. and ran down a corridor ringing the bells of
rooms as he passed.
He
remembered encountering Ronald Reagan during the 1980 presidential campaign
against Jimmy Carter.
“‘Here you
go, Mr. President,’” he recalled saying in greeting the candidate, “and he
goes, ‘No, no, don’t call me that yet!’ So I say, ‘Look, Mr. President, you’re
going to win and when you win send me something for my son.’ Later that year,
he sent us a signed picture made out to my son.”
When Reagan
returned to the hotel years after leaving office, he greeted Mr. Elidrissi by
saying, “‘You’re still here, Jim!’”
Mr.
Elidrissi’s rule about chatting with the rich and famous was simple: “I treat
them like any other guest. I’m friendly, I talk to you, and we connect right
away.”
That was
just the way Mr. Elidrissi expected to be treated when he was a guest, say, at
his favorite neighborhood diner in Elmhurst, Queens. “I like tomato juice, and
the guys know that,” he said. “They welcome me back. It’s the best kind of
service.”
Article from The New York Times
You can also listen to the audio file by clicking on the Play Button
