James E. Potter of East Hampton, an executive with the InterContinental Hotels Group for 32 years, died of heart failure at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital on April 14. He was 86.
Mr. Potter was born on July 25, 1933, in Utica, N.Y., to Earl Potter and Helen Cruikshank Potter, who were the proprietors of the Old Drovers Inn in Dutchess County. He grew up in Utica and graduated with distinction from the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, where he later taught accounting, from 1957 to 1959.
He joined InterContinental in 1960, serving in various accounting, finance, and administrative positions. From 1978 until his retirement in 1992 he was senior vice president in charge of operations and, later, business development. During the 1960s his job led to postings in Pakistan, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines as well as in the South Pacific.
He wrote “A Room With a World View: 50 Years of InterContinental Hotels and Its People, 1946-1996,” which was published in 1996 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson with a first printing of more than 100,000 copies.
Mr. Potter also ran the Old Drovers Inn from 1956 until 1989, when he moved to East Hampton. “The inn is gorgeous,” said Joseph Aversano, a friend of Mr. Potter’s for more than 30 years. “It was a very country club kind of setting. James made it possible for the new owners to keep the spirit of the place. He left them lots of furniture.”
Mr. Potter met Toi Kiccha Buranond, a writer and performing arts correspondent for publications in Thailand, in 1970 in New York City. They were together ever since and were married in 2009. Mr. Buranond, who lives in East Hampton, survives him.
Opera was Mr. Potter’s passion. He was a sponsor of the Met: Live in HD programs at Guild Hall and served as a trustee of the Opera Company of Boston, the Santa Fe Opera, the Santa Fe Opera Club, and the Metropolitan Opera Club. He was also a member of the Met’s patron committee, the Culinary Institute of America’s committee on academic policy, and the Cornell Hotel Society.
“He was very well known in Santa Fe,” said Mr. Aversano. “He would spend summers there during the opera season, and he became friends with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was also an opera lover. Two or three years ago she performed many same-sex marriages at the Santa Fe Opera House at James’s urging.”
A celebration of Mr. Potter’s life will take place at a later date.
