Hollin Hall Automotive To Celebrate 50th Anniversary

Hollin Hall Automotive will celebrate its 50^th anniversary with a party for local residents on Saturday. Attendees can snack on hamburgers and hot dogs. There will also be a raffle for prizes, including free gas and a flat screen television.  The event is from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m.

Hollin Hall Automotive was the subject of an article that ran on Fort Hunt Patch on November 1, 2010(The first day our news site launched).  In light of this milestone, we have decided to reprint the article here:

Full Service Gas Station Treats Customers Like Family

By

Tom Harvey says that in 1963 when he started working at Hollin Hall Automotive, his family's gas station, he knew every single person who drove down Fort Hunt Road. At the time, he had no idea that he would still be there more than 40 years later.

Harvey no longer claims to know every person driving down Fort Hunt Road, but regular patrons to Hollin Hall Automotive say the gas station is committed to the same customer-friendly service it was back then.

One brisk fall morning, Kate Crouse, who works in the same shopping plaza, stopped into Hollin Hall Automotive just to say hello. She says it's the only place that has worked on her family's cars since they arrived to the neighborhood 10 years ago.

Crouse said the quality of the service, the friendly employees, and fair prices have kept her coming back.

"They're just great people. I recommend them all the time," she said.

 Greg Nemetz, who has been a customer for 24 years, agreed.

"They know me. They do excellent repair work. You can drive in here, say your light bulb is out and they'll fix it," he said.

Harvey's father, Leon Harvey, started running the station in 1960 and bought it in 1961. Frank Harvey died several years later, leaving the gas station to his wife, Ruth Ann. At one point all seven of the Harvey brothers worked there and there was a time when there were three generations, including Harvey's mother and some of her grandchildren.

Tom Harvey took over the station in 1993. Now Tom and Ruth Ann, who will be 88 in March, are the only family members left working at the station. Ruth Ann Harvey still works as a cashier, six days a week—a job she doesn't take lightly. When she sold Tom the place in 1993, both Tom and Ruth Ann signed a contract, which guaranteed that she would have a job at the station as long as she wanted one.

Other employees have had led long careers at the station too. Service Advisor/IT manager James Allen started at Hollin Hall Automotive pumping gas while he was in high school, stayed after graduation, and has been there for 12 years.

But Harvey said some things have changed since 1993. One of the first things he did when he took over the station was to install underground tanks for gas. He also found creative ways to expand the station with outside lifts and storage. And when IT Manager James Allen started as a student many of their records were still handwritten. Now, they are preparing to install an updated computer system for the repair shop.

Harvey likes to compare his corner of Fort Hunt to Mayberry R.F.D., citing the 5:30 am coffee klatch that meets at his station and other things that make the area seem wholesome and friendly.

"Couldn't ask for a better location—it's extremely family-oriented," he said.

When Harvey realized that customers from the WWII generation couldn't pump their own gas, he decided to offer this service. Now there are always three employees (usually high school students) out front to take care of pumping gas, cleaning windows, as well as checking under the hood and inspecting tires for all of their customers.

"People want and expect a little more. They're tired of stand-offish businesses," he said.

Harvey said the station saw a huge uptick in sales during the D.C. sniper scare as people went to the station to seek the kind of full service he was offering.  Although, he says, it wasn't exactly the way he would have liked to increase business.

Instead, he prefers to build relationships with his customers. That morning he teased one about how her car mileage had dropped since retirement and marveled at how another man's children have grown up so fast.

Every year, Doris Gazin shows her appreciation to what she calls the "last of the old-time stations" by buying lunch for the entire Hollin Hall Automotive staff.

"They're nice, they're gracious, they take care of their customers, and this is a way to say thank you," she said.

The death of her husband prompted Gazin, a former Hollin Hills resident who now lives further away in Alexandria, to return to Hollin Hall Automotive because she didn't know how to pump gas.

"And she still can't," said Harvey as the two greet each other, laughing.

As long as Hollin Hall Automotive is there, she won't have to.