Our dear mother, Valerie "Dolly" File, was welcomed to her best and final home on November 19, 2024 after passing away in Marietta, Georgia.

Valerie's first years were fraught with the threats of Nazi fascism and Stalinist tyranny. She was born in Yugoslavia to Philippe de Lukin, a civil engineer, and his wife Alexandra, who had escaped the Soviet Union as a teen after her father, a dissident priest, was killed in a Siberian gulag. The family soon moved to Germany, but her father opposed the Nazi regime at their peril. As Soviet forces closed in from the east, 4-year-old Valerie and her parents fled their home under cover of night toward a rumor of hope: American troops whispered to be within reach of victory in Germany's west.
A few days later, Valerie's father was killed in an airstrike.  She spent much of the next several months in a little red wagon, pulled by her mother over 250 miles as they dodged both Nazi and Communist capture.

Valerie celebrated the end of the war by eating all the sweets she could from American soldiers' C-rations. In the months to follow, she and her mother were kept alive by CARE packages from the groundbreaking US charitable coalition. Thus began her lifelong passion for food, hospitality, and the spirit of America.

Valerie spent much of her childhood in Australia, with long stints in England with her beloved great-aunt and uncle. Eventually, the family was accepted to the USA. Already an accomplished cook thanks to having to come up with approximately 1,000 ways to cook mutton and carrots -- Australia's version of food stamps  -- Valerie graduated from a Cordon Bleu school at the ripe age of 17. Soon after, she enrolled at Parsons School of Design and then Columbia University in New York, where she met her future husband and father of her children.  Valerie remained deeply grateful throughout her life to the Americans who made it possible for a Green Card holder and a poor boy from the deep South to achieve higher education at almost no cost.

She became a US citizen the minute she could, found her Christian faith deepened by her first job at the Presbyterian Church's national headquarters, spoke out against antisemitism, marched for civil rights, and refined her talent at hosting lavish parties on a shoestring budget. Her friends dubbed her "Dolly," comparing her vivacious hospitality and fashion style to the main character in Hello, Dolly and her physique to the hot new country star, Dolly Parton.

Following her husband to South Carolina in the late 1960s, Dolly was dismayed to learn that good pizza and thigh-high patent leather boots were not yet popular there. However, the next few years brought two beloved children and a new dream.  A trip to Williamsburg, Virginia inspired her and her husband to move to Asheville, NC and open a restaurant dedicated to farm-grown, local Early American cuisine. The Biltmore Village Inne garnered national media coverage and drew guests from around the world.

The years after a divorce and closure of the restaurant were financially difficult, but Dolly somehow always created beauty in whatever home she and her children lived.  She worked three jobs at times to provide for them, and often said she was "too tired to eat" at dinner, asking them to finish her portion.  No matter how many hours she worked, she always made time for morning and evening prayers and scripture recitations. Occasionally, she awoke in the morning still on her knees next to her bed.

Dolly eventually returned to one of her first loves, legal work, inspiring her son's ambition to become an accomplished attorney.  She spent the last several years part-time in the Atlanta area and in Hendersonville NC. Each of her grandchildren was her favorite person on earth, and she delighted in stuffing them with delicious food.  She spent her retirement re-reading favorite works of literature in all four of her languages and knitting scarves for friends and homeless people until her eyesight failed, dabbling in chess matches with her son that sometimes lasted for days, praying daily for her family, friends, beloved adopted country, and other nations, and asking her journalist daughter the daily question "What's going on in the world?"

Dolly is survived by her son, Gilbert W. File IV and his wife Maria of Raleigh, her daughter Nicole File of Marietta, and her grandchildren Margaret, Jacob, Maximilian, Josephine, and Mary.

A graveside burial service will take place at Riverside Cemetery in Asheville at a date to be announced shortly. A memorial service will be planned for early next year at The Episcopal Church of the Annunciation in Marietta, GA. As much as she loved flowers, Dolly preferred that loved ones donate in her name to CARE or the charity of their choice that reflects her compassionate spirit.