Some dream of getting paid to travel the world, while others have found a lifetime career in the tourism industry at home.
In late 1960s New Orleans, Charlie Farrae—a recent high school graduate—“got called for work on a Tuesday and came to work on a Wednesday,” as he likes to put it.
“When I got out of high school, I didn’t want to work for anybody,” Charlie says. But a former classmate urged him to interview for a bellboy position at a local hotel.
“As long as I fit the uniform,” Charlie remembers, “the job was mine.” And lucky for him, it fit.
Charlie spent five years as a bellboy and was later promoted to a number of front desk and managerial positions at the family-owned Hotel Monteleone—the French Quarter’s oldest and largest.
Now nearly four decades later, he holds the title of “Hotel Historian” and has managed to reject a number of offers trying to lure him elsewhere.
Four days a week he provides new and returning guests with his wealth of knowledge on the 124-year-old hotel that started with just 64 rooms. It now holds more than 600, as well as 55 suites.
At Charlie’s side has been Raoul Vives, a bellman at the Hotel Monteleone for 45 years. He fondly remembers a slew of celebrity guests including Robert Mitchum, Paul Newman, and a controversial (and still disputed) visit by Fidel Castro in the mid-1960s.
The ones he remembers most though are the everyday people who have become his “regulars.” They’ve shared Christmas cards and letters over the years, but what gets him is when the letters stop coming.
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“They just disappear, and I worry,” says Raoul. While the Monteleone only suffered roof damage after Hurricane Katrina, Raoul felt the greatest loss in the people that never came back—guests and a number of co-workers whom he’d known for decades.
Charlie has had the privilege of hosting all three of his daughters’ wedding receptions at the Monteleone, as well as his granddaughter’s, at cost, due to the generosity of the management. “I’m taking care of the grandchildren of the guests I used to take care of,” he says. “It’s a wonderful family hotel. If it was a corporation, they would have kicked me out a long time ago.”
In Montana’s Glacier National Park, Rachel VandeVoort grew up as a self-proclaimed “river rat.”
At the age of 6 she began coming to work with her father, a white water and fishing guide, at Montana’s oldest Glacier Raft Company.
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Growing up, she started helping in the shops, folding T-shirts, and taking the occasional trip down the river with her dad. “As soon as I was old enough, I went to Glacier Raft right away and signed up for work,” Rachel says.
She began as the “Office Girl,” placing reservations and greeting customers. In college she was promoted to “White Water and Fishing Guide,” following in her father’s footsteps. Since then, she has stood in the shoes of nearly every employee at the company.
While majoring in Resource Conservation at the University of Montana, Rachel quickly missed her life of trudging through the streams. “My number one priority in college was how to get back home,” she says.
With her heart in Glacier National Park, and her Type A personality focused on a less seasonal and more stable career, Rachel found full-time employment in sales and marketing at local resorts and businesses. She married a fellow guide she met during her first year, and soon after started a family.
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Today she’s the Sales and Marketing Project Manager back at Glacier Raft Company, where it all began.
Rachel’s memories of growing up in Montana are very personal. An environmental enthusiast, she is saddened that so many locals take the natural resources around them for granted. “Now that I’m older,” she says, “I know how fortunate I was to have had that time with my dad on the river.”
Many hotels become home just as much to the visitor as they do to the people who work there.
Martha Miller began visiting Yosemite National Park on family hiking trips when she was five years old. A California native, she grew up in Carpinteria, just about a six-hour drive down the Pacific coast from Yosemite.
“Little by little, I really fell in love with the mountains,” she says. She now serves as the Special Events Coordinator at the historic Ahwahnee Hotel, planning numerous annual events including the famous Bracebridge Dinner.
As a young girl, Martha dreamt of becoming a ranger and naturalist. “I was told women had no place as a ranger,” she says, “So I started working in the industry any way I could.” Her first position was as a bus girl at the Yosemite Lodge Cafeteria, and later as a waitress during the summers at the Ahwahnee.
For the past 30 years, Martha has found time to travel the world following another love—the opera—consuming it in many different languages.
“But I always come back to Yosemite,” she says.
By Wendy Wegner for PeterGreenberg.com. Wendy is a freelance writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Visit her on the Web at www.wendywegner.com.
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