The hiring process of the Fred Harvey company was unique for its time. In the company's early years, Harvey's advertising in women's magazines and newspapers sought "women of good character" to go West to work. Those who were interested traveled to the Kansas City office for a personal interview. If a young woman met Harvey standards, she would board a train headed for a Harvey House, knowing that a respectable black and white uniform was in her future.
As the railroad towns became more populated and Harvey Houses became well-known for offering favorable jobs for young women, the local Harvey House manager began handling most of the interview and hiring process. Even though most local women came to an interview with a personal recommendation or perhaps a letter from her minister, a woman with not-so-good character occasionally ended up on the local Harvey House payroll.
While conducting research for a series of books about the history of Harvey Houses, most of my interviews with former Harvey Girls included stories about how employees were like family and often went to great lengths to help each other in times of trouble. There were also a few stories of a petty thief among the Harvey Girls who shared close living quarters or a waitress who misrepresented the truth to gain a promotion or transfer to a more favorable location. After all, in over 80 years of employing approximately 100,000 Harvey Girls, there were undoubtedly going to be some who didn't live up to the wholesome Harvey Girl reputation.
Well-documented stories reveal examples of Harvey Girls who took serious missteps to a wilder side of life. Mildred Fantetti Clark Cusey, aka Madam Millie, was one of those Harvey Girls.
Mildred was born in 1906 in Kentucky and orphaned at the age of twelve when her parents died during a flu epidemic. When her older sister, Florence, contracted tuberculosis, the young girls moved to Deming, where she admitted her sister to the Holy Cross Sanatorium at Camp Cody. Mildred went to work as a Harvey Girl through the recommendation of a friend she met at church and worked in the Fred Harvey restaurant in the Deming Union Station.
One version of what happened after Mildred became a Harvey Girl is that she was transferred to Needles, California, to work at the luxurious El Graces. Because of the sweltering climate, she quit and returned to New Mexico, but not to the Harvey House. Instead, Mildred worked at a brothel in Silver City, New Mexico. By the 1930s, while still in her twenties, Mildred had acquired three "houses of pleasure" in Silver City, one in Deming, one in Lordsburg, New Mexico, and one in Laramie, Wyoming. Eventually, her business establishments stretched from New Mexico to Alaska. In her later years, Madam Millie credited her success to her training while working at the Harvey House, citing the emphasis on customer service taught by the Harvey Girls.
Another account of Mildred Cusey's story claims she couldn't make enough money as a Harvey Girl to meet the demands of caring for her sister and was forced to make a different career choice. Regardless of the "why" of Mildred's story, she later became known as Madam Millie and became a very successful businesswoman. In addition to many brothels, she owned a ranch, restaurants, and several homes. Mildred was very active in business and local charities and was described by a Deming resident as "the most sincere and giving person I ever met." Mildred anonymously funded college scholarships for local graduating high school seniors and often helped pay for the milk supply at the Silver City elementary school. When the miners in the region went on strike, Millie sent boxes of groceries to needy families.
Mildred died in 1993 at the age of eighty-seven. Her biography, "Madam Millie: Bordellos from Silver City to Ketchikan," was published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2002. While further researching this unusual Harvey Girl story, I discovered that Madam Millie's last husband of twenty years, James Wendell Cusey, was a naval veteran of World War II, and Millie is buried next to him in Fort Bayard National Cemetery near Silver City, New Mexico. While not entirely living up to the wholesome image of a Harvey Girl, Madam Millie was a survivor and certainly made her place in history.
Rosa Walston Latimer is the author of a series of books about Harvey Houses available on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or Book People, an Austin independent bookstore.
This story was originally published at SlatonHarveyHouse.com.