Football Coach Remembered for his Patience with players | Local News

Born May 8, 1945, in Kansas City, Mo., Julian Harvey was a standout football player at Santa Fe High in the 1960s who never quite got the game out of his system. He coached football and other sports for many years at schools throughout Northern New Mexico and in California. The last team he helped was the Taos Tigers.

Ron Gallegos, who worked with Harvey at McCurdy Charter School in Española and later as an Assistant at Taos, said his friend had an uncanny knack for relating to the young teens he’d Coach, offering them a sense they were on the field with someone who cared.

“They put the kids ahead of themselves,” Gallegos said. “He had the Patience to teach, and to Coach you’ve got to know how to teach. If it meant he’d take 10, 20 minutes out of practice to get to them, great. He just had the knack for putting knowledge into kids’ heads. “

Though Harvey’s love for football was clear – he played at Fort Lewis College in Colorado and loved to talk about the game long after he hung up his spikes – it was far from his only interest. From the late 1970s until the mid-1980s, the Harvey Brothers operated the Line Camp, a legendary music haven that attracted big names and plenty of fun from near and far.

Julian Harvey, a recalled former Line Camp employee and longtime friend Paula Meeske, could keep an order with his size alone, as he stood 6-foot-2 and north of 200 pounds. But it was his Intelligence – “He was erudite,” she said – humor and amiability people Remembered.

“He had this infectious laugh,” she said. “And that put people at ease.”

The Line Camp days are legendary to many: acts like Taj Mahal, John Lee Hooker, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, the Fabulous Thunderbirds and many others took its stage, said former New Mexican Reporter Emily Drabanski, who covered the music scene during the era. But local Bands Drew people in as well, creating an atmosphere that was hard to beat.

“They [Julian] and John Frequently met everyone as they walked through the front door, “she said, recalling the mixture of Santa Fe types, Northern New Mexico Cowboys and Scientists from Los Alamos who’d converge on the place in its heyday.

In the years after the Line Camp, Harvey continued to Coach. But he also did stints as a Prison guard and probation officer. There was little, friends say, they couldn’t do – even when it was difficult.

Gallegos said Harvey in his final years struggled with diabetes but never let it stop him from working with young people. When he couldn’t patrol the sidelines, he kept stats in the stands.

Meeske recalls in great detail sharing “movie nights” with Harvey, the two of them feasting on Sherlock Holmes Films and even wearing the deerstalker hats Holmes favored.

John Harvey said his brother became ill about 10 days before he died. Julian struggled with the disease for days before his death but, as was his habit, made connections with the staff at Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center. In a note to John after Julian’s death, Chaplain relayed how close his nurse had to become him in a short time.

It was a sentiment that surprised none of Harvey’s friends.

“Just such a pleasant guy,” Gallegos said.

The COVID-appropriate memorial was held in December. John Harvey said his brother’s ashes will be placed on the property of one of Julian’s friends in Embudo, high above the Rio Grande.