Big Mtn, Winter Carnival promoter Norm Kurtz dies

Longtime Whitefish civic leader Norm Kurtz, a hardworking promoter of the Big Mountain ski resort and the Whitefish community for decades, a founder of the Whitefish Winter Carnival, died Jan. 10, 2014, in Missoula. He was 86.

Born in Seattle, Kurtz worked as a newspaper marketing manager for the Seattle dailies and then got hooked on Big Mountain and Whitefish during his first trip to the area resort in the early 1950s.

Kurtz went to work as resort founder Ed Schenck’s assistant when the resort opened in 1955. He later recalled working 16- to 20-hour days, especially during those first few lean years on the mountain, from fixing broken toilets to flipping burgers in the bar.

In the late 1950s, he talked Great Northern Railway into give the resort a $30,000 advertising grant to open up markets in the Midwest and Canada. But the resort had no money to pay him in the summer of 1956, so he and wife Carolee headed back to Seattle. Eight days later, however, they were back in Whitefish.

“We had hick blood in our veins by then,” Kurtz said in 2002.

The couple bought a motel in Whitefish, which Carolee ran while raising their young children. Norm worked at the Anaconda Aluminum Co. smelter in Columbia Falls and other odd jobs — including playing piano at Frenchy’s Chinese Gardens on the weekends.

Kurtz managed the Whitefish Chamber of Commerce for a year and worked at a local radio station before the Winter Sports Inc. board hired him back as assistant manager at the Big Mountain ski area in 1960. That was the year Chair 1 was put on the south face.

Business increased by 141 percent that year under Kurtz’s hands-on management style. But 1960 also saw the launch of one of four pageants that Kurtz had conceived — the Whitefish Winter Carnival. Over the years, Kurtz served as the carnival’s chairman, prime minister and king.

After a few years back in Seattle for a few years, the Kurtzes returned to Whitefish in the mid-1960s and was hired as the ski resort manager. He supervised construction of Alpinglow Inn, the first recreational condominiums in the state, and sold most of its 54 units.

Kurtz quit his position as resort manager in 1981, resumed the position in 1984 and  amicably parted company several years later. After that, he kept busy promoting businesses and events through his home-based Community of Interest.

He was known around town as “Mr. Whitefish” and had a hand in varied interests through the years. He loved to fly airplanes and owned several planes. In addition to the piano, Kurtz played the clarinet and saxophone with a local band.