The town of Harvard has been home to many notable enterprises. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that it is also the birthplace of Friendly Crossways, the longest operating, privately owned hostel in the United States. Now run by husband and wife duo Mary Helan and Keith Turner, it is one of the 54 privately owned hostels left in America, thus making Friendly Crossways a place worth remembering.
The Crossways, located near the town boundary on Littleton County Road, was a working farm until 1947, and it was pretty run down when a Quaker minister and his wife, Leslie and Winnifred Barrett, found it and had a vision. With lots of volunteer help, the farm was turned into a hostel and retreat center for nonprofit groups.
Friendly Crossways was originally open only from late spring to early fall. It wasn’t heated or insulated, and it had only dormitory-style rooms. The dining room where the interview for this article was conducted once housed turkeys, and chickens lived just above it.
The Turner family poses in front of Friendly Crossways. (Courtesy photo)
A love affair
Mary Helan’s mother and father, Martin and Anne Vesenka, came to the hostel on different occasions: “My dad came here as a hosteller, and my mother came attending a retreat here,” she says. It wasn’t until later that her parents met at a Quaker work camp in Mexico and found they had Friendly Crossways in common. “So when they got married … he was a teacher. They would come here to help the Barretts run the place in the summer,” recalls Mary Helan.
Even back then it was a special place. One of the first events they had in 1947 was a biracial wedding on the front lawn. “So when my parents retired and my husband and I moved here in 1997, that couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary here, which was pretty darn special,” Mary Helan says.
Through generations
In 1963 when Mary Helan and her parents lived in Indonesia, her parents communicated with the Barretts, who wanted to go to Africa for a year or two. But they needed someone to tend to the hostel. Mary’s parents agreed to take on the task, and during that period Martin and Anne purchased the place.
One of Friendly Crossways’ private rooms with handmade quilts. (Courtesy photo)
Mary Helan grew up at Friendly Crossways, which has been a hostel and retreat center for almost 70 years. The facility was still open only part of the year, but in 1967 that changed. A Peace Corps group heading to Ethiopia used the hostel as its training center before heading abroad. The federal government funded this project and provided the hostel with enough money so that insulation and heat were added throughout, allowing it to be open all year.
For the past 20 years, Mary Helan and Keith have been running the business, making repairs and improvements to their country haven along the way.
One roof, three businesses
There are three separate businesses under the Friendly Crossways roof: the hostel, the retreat center, and the wedding venue. The success of all three businesses combined is what allows Friendly Crossways to keep running and also what makes it unique. According to Keith and Mary Helan, the retreat center has always been the main business. Hosteling is less so for private owners like them. “It’s a labor of love for sure, but we certainly enjoy meeting the very interesting people that come through here,” says Mary Helan.
The wedding season runs from mid-May to mid-October, and a bride and groom are there for the whole weekend with their friends and families, making it a destination country wedding. “It’s much more relaxed,” says Keith. Both Keith and Mary Helan believe that their weddings are unique experiences. “When people come in on a Friday afternoon, you can see that they are stressed, uptight, and by the time they leave on Sunday they are just really relaxed. And we’re like, ‘Yay, we did it right,’” says Mary Helan. Keith takes pride in their business being a place where people can decompress and relax, giving them a taste of the country life. Watching as new relationships and bonds form before their eyes is part of the joy of running such a business, they say.
Hostels: Misconceptions
In Europe, staying in hostels is a culture in and of itself. It’s not uncommon for families to utilize such facilities while traveling. In America, people don’t often take advantage of hostels because they don’t know about them, making it harder and harder for such places to survive. Keith attributes the problem to the higher levels of support of hostels in Europe. In Europe, you find community and government support as well as knowledge of hostels, which one doesn’t find in the United States, making Friendly Crossways and other American hostels “the best-kept travel secret in the U.S.” in Keith’s eyes.
Mary Helan believes that part of the problem is that people think of it as being something exclusively for a younger generation, which it’s not. There used to be age constraints—you couldn’t be older than 25 to stay at a hostel—but hostels internationally no longer have age constraints. “It’s not just for the young; it’s for the young at heart,” said Mary Helan.
At Friendly Crossways, Keith and Mary Helan receive U.S. travelers coming to see New England and sometimes get people who come because they are looking at colleges in the area. And then, of course, they constantly host international travelers to the United States. However, the greatest feature and appeal of staying in hostels is that you never know who you are going to meet. You don’t know if it will be someone from a foreign country or someone from home. “All kinds of cultures mix here, and with the piano and the fireplace and the kitchen, there’s all kinds of community,” says Keith. Mary Helan added that the people who stay in hostels have an adventurous attitude, and they’re open to meeting new people and sharing new cultures and ideas.
A mission of love
Throughout the interview it became clear to me that Keith and Mary Helan run their business with love, and they do so selflessly, for other people, providing a warm and safe environment. For Keith, the appeal of Friendly Crossways was for his family: “We wanted to have a place in the country where our children could run around, and we wanted to have a small, tight, safe community that they could grow up in.”
Mary Helan claimed their core mission and the reason why she is passionate about this work is to provide a safe, comfortable, unique, homelike environment where retreat groups can do their work, where individual travelers can stay, and where people can have weddings and family reunions and just concentrate on being with each other without worrying about anything else.
A hidden gem
According to Mary Helan, there are a lot of hidden gems in Harvard that even Harvard residents may not know about. She wants the town to know that Friendly Crossways is more of a do-it-yourself bed-and-breakfast: “So if people do have friends or family coming midweek, then we’re right here.”
The rustic entryway to Friendly Crossways. (Courtesy photo)
Keith adds that even though few Harvard residents use the hostel, it’s still a valuable place for the town. He says that the chance to use Friendly Crossways locally comes if “you are going to have a family reunion or if you have a quilting group or a knitting group.” They have had the Garden Club present workshops on flower arranging, and they’ve hosted a storytelling festival. Mary Helan and Keith love to be a part of the community and to help organizations support their worthy causes. “We like to give back to this community as much as we can,” says Mary Helan.
The Turners also emphasized that they can be useful to townspeople in case of an emergency such as a power outage. They have a backup emergency generator, solar power, their own well, and many beds. Mary says that part of the specialness about being in Harvard is that when there is a need, people will show up: “It’s been a blessing. The community effort is what I am thankful for. And sometimes help literally walks right up to the door.”
Ready for a future generation
There’s a continuity to this business, as if it is separate from time, existing to be a home for wanderlust travelers, a place of celebration, and a meeting spot for the formation of ideas. Mary Helan loves this place, she loves that her parents did it together, and she loves that she and Keith are doing it together. The Turners’ home is a place amid the chaos where a little reprieve goes a long way.
Both Mary Helan and Keith want to see the business move on to another generation and hope that someone else will come along, see the endless possibilities, and keep it going. “It’s truly one of a kind,” Mary Helan says. “There are not a lot of places like this.”
