If you’ve stayed a few days at French Lick Springs Hotel and thought “wouldn’t it be nice to stay here permanently?”— Bridget Chamberas has lived out your fantasy.
In fact, she literally wrote the book on it.
She spent eight years living on the 5th floor while her father was the hotel’s general manager, and those memories have come back to life within the pages of “Bridget Finds a Home.” It’s a new children’s book addressing some of the uncertainty and fear of moving to a new environment. And all based on firsthand experiences through the eyes of a 4-year-old girl who moved away from Atlanta and into a larger-than-life hotel in tiny French Lick in November of 1979.
“Living in a hotel, obviously it’s a unique experience and I always thought, you know, that might make a unique story someday,” says Bridget, who got the itch to do a children’s book a few years ago while filling in as a librarian at an elementary school. “I started to jot down notes … and I enjoyed writing down my story and remembering some of the special people who helped form my childhood in French Lick. I appreciate the opportunity to remember them and memorialize a few of them.”
Illustrations from Bridget's book bear an unmistakable resemblance to the real-life French Lick Springs Hotel.
You can meet the author July 5 and 6 when Bridget (Maloney) Chamberas returns to French Lick Springs Hotel for a book reading, signing and scavenger hunt.
And, oh, does she have some stories.
She could show you the little nook underneath a set of steps on the fourth floor – she found it with a friend, and it became their favorite hideout/hangout spot. She could tell you about falling off her bike, breaking her arm, and having a few hotel guests and Bernard the bellman come to the rescue and take Bridget to her mom. Or getting a hairbrush tangled in a friend’s hair after school one day and having to go down to the salon to get it unstuck. (Plenty of perks to having all those hotel services in arm’s reach.)
Then there were those indoor rides.
“During the quieter months at the hotel, my mom would let me ride my tricycle up and down the hallway on the 5th floor. I would park my tricycle outside our front door on the 5th floor, and my mom could always tell when the hotel got too busy for me to ride in the hallway because my tricycle would be found at another end of the hallway where I did not leave it — my mom assumed it was guests who had had too much to drink! Also, around this same time, the movie “The Shining” came out. We were too young to see the movie, but when my siblings saw it when they were older, they said I reminded them of the character who rode her bike up and down the hallway. It was an eerily similar life … but thankfully we lived a very peaceful life and my dad never lost his mind!”
Summertime memories at the hotel.
Bridget’s tricycle was always parked at suite 531/532. Today, this area is traditional hotel guestrooms, but back in the day, it was converted into an apartment for Bridget’s family of six. Slowly over time, just as it does for the little girl in the book, the surroundings started feeling like home thanks to some of hotel staff members.
James the waiter. Dorothy the housekeeper. Marilyn the rec room attendant and Janice the family babysitter — all played a memorable role in Bridget’s upbringing and inspired certain characters in the book.
Of course, there was another familiar smiling face.
“We’d walk across the street to school at Springs Valley and the bellman, Captain Sam, was the last person we saw on our way out the door and the first person we saw on our way back home,” Bridget recalls.
On the front hotel steps before Bridget's first day at Springs Valley Elementary. The carpet was changed from red to green while her family lived at the hotel.
When Friday came, Bridget and her siblings always looked forward to grabbing dinner at the hotel coffee shop. Saturday nights were always sacred. Her father, Frank Maloney — who was asked to live on the premises because it was such a large hotel — always made sure of it.
“That was always family night. The six of us would all get dressed up and eat in the dining room so my dad could be working, technically, but also be with the family,” says Bridget, also recalling some of her go-to orders at the restaurant. “When I was little, it was always the fried chicken and hush puppies. I would eat that all the time. Finally, my mom said, ‘Why don’t you try something new?’ I remember trying the chicken Kiev; prime rib and baked potatoes. We were so spoiled,” she says with a laugh.
Celebrating a birthday in Suite 531/532, the family apartment.
Granted, there’s plenty of room within a 421,000 square-foot hotel for a kid to find trouble. Such as the time Bridget and a friend were “playing kitchen” and accidentally caused a grease fire cooking burgers in the apartment. Or her sisters climbing on enormous stacks of chairs in the downstairs ballroom, where The Grand Colonnade Restaurant is today.
But hotel life came with limits.
“Every day, we were expected to clean up after ourselves, make our beds. Even though we had housekeeping service, my mom made sure they didn’t come in every day because she didn’t want us to grow up thinking it was okay to have someone picking up after us. We were taught to treat the hotel staff respectfully, and my parents taught us they were part of our extended family. We grew up having a lot of respect for the people there, and we just really loved them. I still do, which is part of the reason why I wanted to write my story as a way of celebrating the people there and thanking them for the way they shaped our lives.”
Exploring the hotel created memories in every season. Look closely in the winter photo, and you can see the old domed swimming pool in the top right.
Bridget’s family moved a handful of times from city to city, hotel to hotel. Yet when it came time for storybook inspiration, nothing quite compared to the memories made here.
“I imagine my dad would say it was one of the best places he ever worked, because of the people,” says Bridget, who’ll be bringing her teenage kids in July to see French Lick Springs Hotel for the first time. “French Lick was special. There was no other hotel where we connected with the people as much as we did in French Lick. There was just something about the people there that was really special.”
