‘Fred Heads’ pop in to the Belen Harvey House Museum

BELEN — More than two dozen “Fred Heads” paid a visit to the Hub City last month to pay homage to the man who has been labeled the “founding father” of the American service industry.

Fred Harvey, who started his venture with a single lunch counter in the late 1800s and grew into the first chain of restaurants in the country, was a man who believed in customer service and has left his mark on the service industry. His Harvey House lunch rooms spanned the country, serving rail passengers real food on real plates, including the one on the edge of the modern day BNSF fuel depot in the heart of the city of Belen.

The Belen Harvey House Museum holds a collection of items and objects that captures Harvey’s dedication to quality as well as the businesses symbiotic relationship with the railroad.

This year marked the 15th annual Fred Harvey History Weekend, an event that usually takes place at the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe. It took a bit of a southern detour this year, and made a stop at the Whistle Stop Cafe nestled in the Belen museum, where homemade delicacies such as seafood potpie and green chile apple pie were on the menu for the Oct. 24 celebration of Harvey’s legacy.

Frances Zeller, the museum manager for the Belen Harvey House Museum, was able to intercept the “Fred Heads” this year before they headed to The City Different for the annual history weekend.

“Food has its powers, I’m not gonna lie,” Zeller said with a chuckle. “They’ve been meeting, discussing and learning new things about the Harvey Company for years.”

This visit marks the first official Fred Harvey event the museum has hosted, Zeller said, which increases the Belen museum’s profile among followers of Fred.

“There are new people every day becoming Fred Heads. People plan vacations all around visiting Harvey Houses,” she said. “This really marks the museum as a destination. It takes a little more than a half an hour to see it, if you’re say lightly interested, to go through the museum, cafe and gift shop. If you’re highly interested, you can spend a few hours.”

Guests visiting Belen enjoyed a VIP guided tour of the museum, lunch at the Whistle Stop Cafe and a complimentary CD, “Fred Harvey & the American West.”

Among the visitors was Daggett Harvey, one of the last family members to work for the Fred Harvey Co. before it was sold to a Hawaiian conglomerate in 1976. Even though he was born with the Harvey name, it did him no favors, Daggett said. He worked his way up from kitchen help to managing the oldest restaurant in the chain.

Comparing the modern service industry to what he learned as a young man, Daggett said modern companies could stand to learn that “quality pays off, ethics pay off, treating employees well pays off.”

After a tour of the museum, Daggett said it contained a “formidable collection” of Fred Harvey memorabilia, “some things I’ve never seen anywhere else.”

Zeller said she received positive feedback about the museum from the visitors in October, especially Daggett.

“He told me of all the Harvey Houses, we have the one with the best exhibits ever. That is really a feather in my cap,” she said. “And it’s just getting better.”

One exhibit that was especially significant to Daggett, according to Zeller, was the George Clark exhibit she created during the COVID pandemic. Clark was a longtime Fred Harvey Company employee.

Part of the display featured a letter from Daggett’s father to Clark.

“He’d never seen the letter and it really seemed to move him,” she said. “It felt like I spent all of COVID putting together that display and that really made it feel so worthwhile.

“I think having this event here really shows how important the museum is; it serves the community and people worldwide. We are so used to it since it sits in our backyard, but it’s something pretty amazingly special.”

Award-winning journalist Stephen Fried, who authored “Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West One Meal at a Time,” was on hand at the Belen event. The book explores how Harvey helped shape American culture and history for three generations, from the 1880s all the way through World War II.

Fried said the restored Harvey House in Belen was beautiful, lamenting the demolition of other such houses in New Mexico, such as the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque.

“That is one of the worst things that could have happened to New Mexico, was to knock down the Harvey Houses,” Fried said.

The author said the restaurants were, in a way, great equalizers. Everyone who traveled by train, whether they were royalty or an ordinary traveler, had to stop and have a meal in the same room.

In addition to improving the displays at the museum, Zeller and the staff have made strides in improving the museum’s gift shop. In addition to the traditional history and railroad books it has been offering, the shop now carries educational, wooden children’s puzzles, jewelry, crazy socks, scarves and jackets, as well as locally produced dried goods.

Zeller said many of the items are produced by female artists and women-owned businesses, as well as sourced in environmentally sustainably ways.

“We have jackets made from old sari clothes from India. Scarves made by Valencia County artists. We are also selling products from Valencia Flower Mill and Red Doc Farms beans,” she said. “Jewelry maker Pati Woodard is making an exclusive line of Harvey Girl jewelry, knick knacks and other items. We have gifts from $5 to $100.”