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Not too far from W.F. West High School in Chehalis, there’s a valley that, if you ran through, you’d see Harold Borovec’s house on Magnolia Drive. There, Harold, who had a soft spot for squirrels, birds and deer, could be found in rare moments of rest feeding the area critters and tending to the rhododendrons, the 56-year-old magnolia tree and other flowers he planted around the property.
Go a bit farther, over the hill, and you’d find the property owned by Harold’s parents, Homer and Marietta (Morris) Borovec. Harold’s uncle, Edwin Borovec, once lived nearby.
Harold Borovec was born in Chehalis on April 2, 1927. He died June 10, 2023, at the age of 96, having lived near that valley in Chehalis his whole life.
In life, Harold Borovec had a profound impact on the Chehalis community, his family and the steam trains he carried a lifelong passion for. In death, Harold is remembered as a community icon and a good man.
“One of the things that make me proudest of him is he impacted so many lives,” Harold’s youngest son, Rick Borovec, told The Chronicle last week.
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Harold started work at a young age in the 1930s, helping his father cut, stack and deliver wood as part of what would eventually become Borovec Trucking.
“He admired trains from when he was a little boy,” Mary-Kay Nelson, president of the Centralia-Chehalis Railroad and Museum (CCRM), said of Harold. “There’s a lot of records that go back to when he was young and would see the 15 train go by, the locomotive steam train that he loved so deeply, and he used to call it his train.”
“He would tell us all these stories about how he’d ride around on his bike, and he'd see these guys or he'd see the engine,” one of his coworkers at CCRM, Bill Deutscher, said.
He started working as a clerk for the Cowlitz, Chehalis & Cascade Railway in 1943 and, as soon as he turned 16, he took a job at Northern Pacific Railway helping keep helper engines going during the graveyard shift.
Upon graduating from Chehalis High School in 1945, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy to aid in the World War II effort, his son, Carl Borovec, said.
“When they got to Chicago, to the camp, the war ended,” Carl told The Chronicle last week. “So they didn’t know what to do with all these guys.”
Harold ended up getting shipped to Bremerton “to be, as he called it, a BSD: a big steel desk,” Carl recalled.
Harold was discharged about a year later, in April 1946. Six days later, Harold married his childhood friend, Alberta Frances McChesney.
Harold and Alberta had played together as children and, when he was a teenager, Harold had the realization he wanted to marry Alberta someday.
“They were playing football on the field (with) all the kids in the neighborhood and my mom was there, and she was about 13, and he was like ‘Hmm, I really like her. I’m going to marry her someday,” Harold and Alberta’s daughter, Cindy Matson, recalled. “It’s a very sweet story.”
As the couple was making their home on Magnolia Drive, Harold went back to work for Northern Pacific Railway, where he worked from 1946 to 1958.
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, according to local historian Julie McDonald. Alberta, a bookkeeper for the family businesses, served on the finance committee while Harold joined the history committee, according to McDonald.
In 1958, Harold left Northern Pacific to buy Central Fuel Co. with his brother, Byron Borovec. The brothers ran the business together up until 1990, when they sold it to Harold’s son Rick Borovec and Byron’s son Mike Borovec. The business has since been renamed Central Fuel Heating & Cooling and continues to operate on Market Street in Chehalis.
“The same way he ran his business was the same way he ran his life. He was generous, he was kind-hearted,” Rick said.
Additionally, in 1959, Harold and Byron Borovec joined forces with their father and father-in-law to found Central Redi-Mix.
The brothers also built apartment buildings in downtown Chehalis during this time.
Harold’s two oldest sons, Kerry and Carl, both recalled waking up at 4 a.m. some days to join their dad as he delivered hay, not returning home until 10 p.m. at night.
Carl recalled days from his early childhood, before city expansion made the business impractical, where his dad ran cows between the other Borovec properties in the area.
Years after the cow running had stopped, Carl recalled, Harold spontaneously brought home a donkey from auction.
“I don’t know why he did it other than, maybe, he didn’t want the donkey to go to the meat factory,” Carl told The Chronicle.
“Every time we’d walk out at 4 o’clock in the morning to go get the hay truck, it would bray. All the neighbors heard it, too. Sort of like a rooster,” Carl said.
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On weekends, when Harold wasn’t working or helping raise his four kids — Kerry, Carl, Rick and Cindy — he would “play trains,” as Nelson called it.
Harold and Alberta were frequent travelers, Cindy recalled. “They traveled all over the country by train. They never flew,” Cindy said, adding, “They were always going to a train convention somewhere and they would make it into a fun trip.”
Cindy recalled memories of her dad volunteering at Snoqualmie Railroad Museum, where the family owned a caboose that they converted into living quarters, complete with beds for the whole family and a small kitchen area.
“It was just kind of a unique experience to be there,” Cindy said.
Harold volunteered at the Snoqualmie Railroad Museum for a while before moving over to Point Defiance then to Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad, Carl recalled. At one point, Harold and Alberta went to Virginia City to support the Virginia & Truckee Railroad Company.
“They allowed him to pull the throttle on the master steam locomotive because they respect and honor him that much,” Carl said.
In roughly 1985, Harold and a group of fellow train-enthusiasts in Chehalis got together to see if they could restore the No. 15 steam engine: the 1916 Cowlitz, Chehalis & Cascade Railway Baldwin locomotive Harold had grown to love as a child.
“The group of guys could see the steam locomotive sitting in that Recreation Park in Chehalis on 13th Street and they got the idea that they could bring it back to life and they could have it run again and take people on excursions,” Nelson said, adding, “Mostly, I think the group wanted to play trains and wanted to run that train.”
The train was moved from Recreation Park up to Mineral, where Harold and others worked for three to four years to restore it.
“I have fond memories of how many trips we made to Mineral and my dad would go up there with Harold, and they would work side by side with other train guys to bring No. 15 back to life,” Nelson said.
Thanks to their efforts, the No. 15 locomotive provided school field trip excursions, Santa trains and other adventures to Chehalis residents and visitors from 1989 to 2015.
For his part in restoring the No. 15 and helping run CCRM, the organization has informally called Harold Borovec its “founder and father.”
“We're so grateful for the legacy we have today because of what he did, keeping it together with the organization as a board member, a crew member, head engineer. You name it, he did it,” Nelson said.
In addition to his work on the trains themselves, Harold was a dedicated mentor to several younger train enthusiasts.
One of those mentees was Andrew Rose, who met Harold in around 1987 at about the age of 10, he recalled.
Rose’s father had taken Rose to Mineral whenever they got the chance to help work on the train restoration and once the train was running, Rose volunteered at the depot during the summers when he was out of school.
“I got to know him very well from a young age, and he was kind of a mentor of mine,” Rose said. “I mean, I had a mom and dad and grandparents and everything, but he was just kind of an influence on me … he’s always been an important person in my life.”
Harold’s youngest son, Rick, told The Chronicle last week he was proud of his dad for the mentoring work he did.
“It’s just been a remarkable thing, these kids growing up,” he said.
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Alberta was a constant part of her husband’s railroad activities up until her death in April 2013.
“Her philosophy was, ‘If you can’t beat them, join them,’” Cindy recalled. “She just jumped in with both feet … she was very involved with him because it was what he loved to do.”
Harold always enjoyed going to the old Kit Carson Restaurant on Interstate Avenue in Chehalis and talking with the waitresses and other patrons who used the space as a community hub, but when Alberta died after two years with bone cancer, Cindy said, “it was a lifeline for him.”
The cooks and waitresses at Kit Carson “were like family, especially after my mom died,” Cindy recalled. “He would spend hours down at Kit Carson and just talk. It was really just kind of a hub … and he just really loved the people there.”
Harold never lost his habit of making conversation with wait staff and other helpers, even at the end of his life, when he was in the hospital.
“He could have chosen to be grumpy or unhappy with his situation, but he still found time to kid the nurses,” Rick said. “That’s just the way he was as a person.”
According to Rick, Harold’s family wasn’t sure whether or not to have a public celebration of life for Harold until after they saw the large response to social media posts announcing his death earlier this month and realized how big of an impact Harold had on his community.
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A celebration of Harold’s life is planned for 2 p.m. July 29 at the First Christian Church in Chehalis.
For updates, visit https://www.facebook.com/haroldborovec.
Chronicle columnist Julie McDonald’s recent column on Harold Borovec can be read online at https://tinyurl.com/494unppv.
