Housing Hall of Famer

Longtime Bigfork builder joins elite group of inductees

It's not hard to get John Norrish talking.

He can go on at length about what got started on Sept. 6, 1960, the day he and his identical twin brother Joe started their construction business, just a day out of the Navy and a step away from their college careers.

"We always worked for ourselves," the 70-year-old Bigfork builder said. "We never had a boss."

He can even talk freely about his beloved brother, whom he lost in a construction accident 10 years ago when Joe stepped backward off a floor truss and hit his head.

"We never spent more than 10 days apart in our lives until the day Joe married," just a month or two shy of his 50th birthday, Norrish said. John himself married when he was 55 and lives with his wife Reggie just north of Bigfork.

But just try to get him to elaborate on his June 21 induction into the Montana Housing Hall of Fame - only the 12th inductee in the association's 43-year history - and the tone changes a bit.

"I don't know if it was deserved, but it was longevity," said Norrish, a 25-year board member and now a life director of the Montana Building Industry Association. He and Joe started their careers in Idaho where they joined the Idaho State Building Contractors Association in 1978. In 1980 they joined the Flathead Building Industry Association and thus the Montana state association.

Norrish has been the Flathead president three times and in 1989 headed the state association, the group that bestowed the honor at this year's convention in Missoula.

"It caught me off guard to the point that I cried," Norrish said of the surprise announcement.

The honor struck a deep chord with Norrish who, by his own and others' accounts, is devoted to the highest standards of his profession.

Part of the award, he was quick to point out, belongs to his late twin.

"I just want people to know this is an award by my peers and that's why it means more to me," Norrish said. "I worked 40 years but a lot of guys out there have worked 50 years and they didn't get it. Sure, I got some recognition but there's lots of people in this state who are just as deserving."

"JOHN IS probably one of the nicest, kindest gentlemen I have ever come across," Nancy Rae said.

Rae is the business manager for the state association, which fielded a panel that worked for the past six months to nominate candidates. Criteria include at least 15 years' membership and active, uninterrupted involvement with the association.

The final Hall of Fame vote was by secret ballot of the state board, on which Norrish sits. He expected to induct Helena builder Bill Pierce, a man whose work Norrish respects.

Turns out, lots of his peers respect Norrish as much.

"He's just a wonderful man, he truly is. He's a true gentleman," Rae said. "His heart is in the building industry. He truly is [dedicated to] affordable housing. He really takes his profession seriously."

Reggie Norrish was in cahoots with Rae and the rest of the state association's staff as they kept Norrish in the dark about his pending honor. Rae casually shared breakfast with him the morning before the awards banquet in Missoula, as Reggie Norrish had lifetime friends, family and neighbors assembling back at their Bigfork home. The surprise party started on the deck when the couple pulled back into their driveway on Sunday, Norrish's 70th birthday.

JOHN AND Joe Norrish were the oldest of eight kids born and reared in Durand, Wis. Their parents started their family when the nation still was struggling to pull itself out of the Great Depression.

They grew their own food and, thanks to his dad's job at a creamery, always managed to have milk, butter, cheese and eggs on the table. Norrish said it was one of the reasons the family survived, no easy feat for a household that had eight teenagers at the table at the same time.

After high school the twins, a designation that took the place of their individual names for much of their lives, signed up for a four-year hitch as electricians with the Navy in the years between the Korean conflict and the Vietnam War. They enrolled at Superior State College in Duluth, Minn., where John studied pre-engineering and took a stab at atomic physics before they tried for an Oregon college. When credits wouldn't transfer they headed to the University of Idaho in Moscow. John earned his animal science degree there in 1966, then went back for a 1976 degree in business marketing.

Their construction work put them both through college and launched their post-graduate careers.

"We built a furniture store in Lewiston, Idaho, and made $15,000 on the job," he remembered. "We haven't made that much on a job since."

After 20 years in Idaho, a team physician at the University of Idaho convinced the twins to build a four-plex he had in mind for Kalispell. By 1984 the home was done.

With that as a start, Norrish Construction went on to build 28 condominiums in Bigfork and the first 17 homes at Eagle Bend, a job they landed thanks to their association with a former University of Idaho football player who was the project manager.

"We got lucky enough to get a premier job in one of the best places to live in the United States," he said. "We called it the Good Old American Know-Who."

THE HISTORY of Norrish Construction in the Flathead has been one of hard work, honest dealing and a sixth sense between John and Joe.

"We were so close that when it came to construction, we never discussed it. Joe just always hung the doors," John said, and John just always did the work he had natural skills in. Each knew the jobs were getting done without delegating tasks. After Joe's death, John was a bit surprised at just how much Joe had been doing.

Norrish said his only employee now, Joel Olhausen, is filling Joe's old role in fine fashion.

The longtime builder is from the old school, where deals were sealed on a handshake, and he tended to absorb cost overruns just to preserve friendships. He prefers to keep it that way.

"I have signed eight contracts in my life," Norrish said, and one of those ended in the only time Norrish has ever been in court. "It's tougher now, there's [less] trust out there now. It's a people-pleasing business, and it's harder and harder to please."

Norrish's latest project is on Montana 206 just north of Woody's Country Store. The landscape has changed considerably since the early days when, in his first term as president of the Flathead Building Industry Association, he led a group of 25 members. Today there's close to 400.

He's one of only 19 certified graduate builders in the state, achieved by completing at least nine college graduate courses in building-related fields. He stays certified by taking another course every year.

His community service is broad - five years on the Flathead Planning and Zoning Commission, ending a decade ago when the basis for current regulations were finished. He did the same for two years in Latah County, Idaho.

For 10 years he and Joe were team captains for United Way's Christmas in April, offering free home repairs for the elderly and handicapped in the Flathead. They also were team captains for two Habitat for Humanity homes in Kalispell in 1998, one of them blitz-built over a three-day weekend for a single mom with three children.

In Idaho, they also built group homes for paraplegic and quadriplegic clients through Stepping Stones of Idaho.

"Over the years, besides being healthy, that's what's kept me going," Norrish said. "I get more out of doing something for somebody else. That's why I'm still working."

He plans to stay at it another 10 years before retiring. Judging from his family history of long, healthy lives, he said it's a pretty sure bet he'll make it.

The day after his twin brother died 10 years ago, Norrish put $5,000 toward a scholarship fund in Joe's name. Now the state's nine local builders' associations contribute toward it annually and, until last year, national association money added to the pool. For the first seven years a $1,500 scholarship went to an incoming college freshman in the construction field. Now there are two, one for technical-school students and another for four-year students. The award was raised to $2,000 apiece for the past two years.

He's hoping to encourage a new generation's enthusiasm in the building industry, offering a chance at a career they could enjoy as much as he has loved his own.

"I can honestly say I've never gone to work [on a day] that I hated going to work," Norrish said. "If you go to work with a chip on your shoulder and you hate what you're doing, you're not going to be very successful."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com