Norm Calvert is the director of computer services for Flathead County government.

Like his computers, Calvert prefers the cold

It was Christmas season 1981 at Norm Calvert's house in St. Petersburg, Fla. He had a house full of visiting relatives. Forget winter. It was hot outside, with 98 percent humidity, and on top of it all he was also cooking, overheated and dripping with sweat.

It was at that point that Calvert - never a fan of hot weather anyway - made a momentous decision.

"No more," he said to himself. "I'm not spending another Christmas in Florida."

That decision set off "a series of fortunate events," he said, that ultimately led him and his family to the Flathead Valley.

"I have always been a winter person," he explains now, after 22 years in Northwest Montana. "I don't mind cold. I don't mind snow. There hasn't been enough snow up here, really, to keep me happy."

Calvert, 58, is now director of computer services for Flathead County government - one of only two positions he's held since leaving the Coast Guard in the early 1970s.

He joined the Coast Guard after completing a business administration degree in Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois. His brother had also been in that branch of the service, but it was the fact that his draft physical was scheduled - this was 1968, after all, and the Vietnam War was in full swing - that helped steer him in that direction.

Calvert served 18 months in Bangor, Maine, as a sonar technician, then fulfilled the rest of his four-year stint at a recruiting office in Boston.

Then he answered an ad for a computer technician for the Times Publishing Co., which put out the St. Petersburg Times, because he thought it looked interesting - and it was, apparently, because it kept him in Florida for the next 10 years.

Then the heat, humidity and the crowds became too much.

For instance, one of the main attractions of his Florida home was that he was, at one point anyway, about 15 minutes from the beach. By the time he was ready to leave, the same trip took close to an hour, and then it was impossible to park.

At about the same time, Calvert's brother also was looking to move and wanted to buy a gas station/convenience store somewhere. They came across one for sale in Babb - but one of Calvert's co-workers who just happened to be from Whitefish told him to drop the Babb idea and start looking at the Flathead Valley.

A few days later, Calvert saw an advertisement from a Whitefish doctor looking for a computer programmer. He and his brother traveled here to check it out, and by chance wandered into a real estate office that had an agent who had just moved to the area from the same part of Florida where Calvert lived.

She had a contact in county government and knew of a programming opening coming up. Calvert applied and in short order had a job offer - and since his arrival he hasn't wanted to leave.

"I loved it up here," he said. "I've never had any desire to live anywhere else since."

That's true even with the surge in population and development that's taken place since he moved here.

"The growth that's happening now reminds me of what happened in Florida. It's scary," he said. But, he added, "There's still enough space here that you can get away."

When he started with the county on April 1, 1982, there was a mainframe and about two dozen "dumb terminals." Now he oversees a network of roughly 300 computers, not including laptops. There's still a mainframe computer, although that's being phased out over the next year as the computer department consolidates several disparate data systems into a cohesive whole.

It's a large project that will continue at least for the next year. The problem, Calvert said, is that the county has had a patchwork of systems over the years, and technology has evolved so that newer equipment that could make public records widely available cannot display information stored in the old formats. That includes land records, recorded documents, even budget information.

"It's not in a format that is easily accessible," Calvert said.

Calvert lives in Columbia Falls with his wife, Cheryl, a second-grade teacher. Their daughter Beth lives in the area, and their son John lives in Boise. They have four grandchildren.

A few years ago he took up skiing - his version of a midlife crisis, he said - and became hooked.

"I used to call in and say, 'I have an appointment with Dr. Snow, my therapist,'" he said. "I'd take four hours of vacation and come in later."