Chehalis lost a historical icon June 10 with the passing of Harold Lee Borovec, a hardworking and talented 96-year-old with a vast knowledge of local history and a deep love for his wife.
Most people know Harold for the twinkle in his blue eyes and his role as the “founder and father” of the Chehalis-Centralia Railroad & Museum. In the mid-1980s, Harold and other volunteers rescued the 1916 Cowlitz, Chehalis & Cascade Railway Baldwin locomotive from Recreation Park in Chehalis and spent every Saturday for three years in Mineral restoring it.
Their efforts paid off when, in 1989, the No. 15 locomotive started pulling the Chehalis-Centralia Steam Train over former Milwaukee Railroad tracks west out of Chehalis. For three decades, Harold donned his red-and-white polka dot hat and ran the steam train as its engineer — offering school field trip excursions, Santa trains, dinner adventures and the always-sold-out Polar Express.
He was always willing to share his passion with other railfans, including my brother-in-law George Melander and my nephew Ricky McDonald when they visited us from Colorado.
I first met Harold more than a decade ago at the Lewis County Historical Museum, where he shared entertaining stories with me and the late Margaret Shields, another local history icon. Then, at the Southwest Washington Fair, while chatting with him and his wife, Alberta, who were staffing the museum’s desk, he asked if I could help him publish a book he’d written. We worked together off and on for seven years and, in 2019, published “I Was No Nutsplitter: Railroad Machinist Recollections of E.R. Lambert as recorded by Harold Borovec.” In railroad jargon, “nutsplitter” is a slang word for “machinist.”
In his book, Harold recounts the history of the Gilmore & Pittsburgh Railroad, which operated in Idaho from 1910 until 1939, as told to him by E.R. Lambert, a man he worked with when he was a teenager at the Cowlitz, Chehalis & Cascade Railway.
I encouraged Harold to publish a second book, one that recounts the history of the CC&C, which was abandoned in the 1950s — a priceless history for railroad aficionados that also describes his tremendous love for his wife.
Others recognized Harold’s deep roots and influence in the local community. When I was hired in 2011 to create a history of the Chehalis Industrial Park, I interviewed Harold because the business he and his brother Byron owned, Central Fuel Co., was among the park’s first tenants. He figures prominently in the book “Chehalis: A ‘Can-Do’ Community, A History of the Industrial Commission.”
In the early 1950s, both Harold and Alberta participated in the Adventure in Cooperation, a collaborative effort that drew together about 500 Chehalis residents who mapped out the community’s future. Alberta, a bookkeeper for the family businesses, served on the finance committee while Harold joined the history committee.
When I interviewed this lovely couple, Harold doodled on paper to illustrate his stories, and Alberta noted, “He can’t do anything without drawing pictures.”
Theirs was a wonderful example of lasting love.
Harold was born in Chehalis on April 2, 1927, the eldest of Homer and Marietta (Morris) Borovec’s three sons. In his yet-unpublished CC&C book, he shares a bit about his life. As a child of 6, he met a 4-year-old girl named Alberta in Onalaska. Their parents were friends, so the two played together as children. Alberta, who had an older sister and younger brother, later moved with her family to the Scammon Creek area of Centralia.
Harold was 15 when he realized Alberta would make someone a fine wife and he decided she was the girl for him.
“That was a youthful decision, made in haste, but never wavering and never regretted,” he wrote in his unpublished book. “We eventually became fabulous friends, loving lovers, married mates, and great partners in a lifelong adventure of love and harmony that cancer ended too soon. Early on, I became convinced that she was an angel, sent from heaven, to love and nurture me through life’s trials, tribulations, and triumphs, a task that she accepted willingly and capably, accomplishing miracles all along the way! What a gal! What a lady!”
Alberta Frances McChesney was only 16 and Harold, a 5-foot-11-inch freckled redhead, had just turned 19 when they married in April 1946, inside the Navy chapel at the Bremerton Navy Yard, just six days after his discharge. They made their home on Magnolia Drive in Chehalis, where they raised four children — sons Kerry, Carl and Rick, and a daughter, Cindy. On April 22, 2013, Alberta died after suffering from bone cancer for two years. She was 83 and at that time had seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
“I’m certain that God was pleased with her earthly performance, as was I,” Harold wrote. “And it’s no trick at all to visualize her grand return and entrance ‘home’ to heaven. After sixty-seven years of marvelous marriage, she is sorely missed and virtually impossible to replace, but life goes on!”
Although her loss devastated Harold, his faith promised they’d be reunited — and now they are, perhaps chasing trains and following abandoned tracks together in what he described in his unpublished book as “the big railroad in the sky.” He wrote about the death of a railroad friend, Roy Hargrove, and noted, “Would make me ever so happy if’n he and Alberta are swappin’ heavenly yarns together as we wait our return.”
Harold learned to work hard at an early age. From the early 1930s, his father, Homer, cut wood and, with help from his wife and sons, stacked it in his truck for delivery to customers. His business grew into Borovec Trucking, and in the Chehalis Industrial Park history, Harold said his father “could outwork everybody in town — except me.”
Harold worked as a clerk for the Cowlitz, Chehalis & Cascade Railway from 1943 through 1945, when he graduated from Chehalis High School and enlisted in the U.S. Navy.
After his discharge, he worked for the Northern Pacific from 1946 through 1958. Then he and his brother, Byron, started Central Fuel Co., delivering coal to customers throughout the region. They sold the business to their sons in 1990.
In 1959, the two brothers joined with their father and brother-in-law, Lyle Granger, to create Central Reddi-Mix. They built a railroad spur onto their industrial park property to serve both businesses.
I listened in fascination as Harold told me about one summer project in the 1970s where he and his brother filled empty milk shake cups with concrete to help insulate the Alaska-Canada pipeline. They bought thousands of milk shake cups, strung wire through them, then filled each with concrete. Their creation, wrapped around the pipeline, provided a buffer between it and specially made insulation — a metal bonded polyurethane foam — to offer better protection.
Harold was known throughout the Pacific Northwest as a steam preservationist, engineer, and mechanical officer for the Puget Sound & Snoqualmie Railroad, the Camp 6 logging exhibit in Tacoma, the Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad, and the Chehalis-Centralia Railroad & Museum. In 2013, he received the South Sound Heritage Association’s Heritage Award for his excellence and service in local historical preservation. The association honored Margaret Shields in 2012 for her contributions.
A celebration of Harold’s life is planned for 2 p.m. July 29 at the First Christian Church in Chehalis.
In his unpublished book, Harold wrote about Alberta, his angel. “Sorrowfully, my lady is gone now. But wonderful memories remain, and I’m eagerly lookin’ forward to seein’ her again — God willing.”
Although I’ll mourn his loss, I take comfort in knowing Harold and Alberta are together again, perhaps swapping stories with my folks and all those railroad fans they’ve met here on Earth.
In announcing Harold’s death on the “Harold Borovec: Steam Locomotive Engineer” Facebook page, one of his children wrote, “We read so many times on here about the last fire on a locomotive before it is scrapped. Last night Harold Borovec’s fire went for the last time. I hear he will get a new boiler in Heaven. He went to be with Mom and the rest of our clan in Heaven.”
I am honored to have known Harold, a friend and mentor to many, and worked with him on preserving local history. I’ll miss his joy, kindness and quick wit. Until we meet again …
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
