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Kalispell Pioneer

By Beacon Staff

Two weeks ago, 83-year-old Ivan O’Neil completed a 12-mile hike in Glacier National Park. It would be hard to say whether his age makes the feat more impressive or the fact that he’s legally blind and uses poles to navigate the terrain. O’Neil would say neither. He’s not impressed.

“Well, there wasn’t much elevation and it wasn’t off-trail,” he said. “And I used to go a lot farther.”

O’Neil is an original founder of both Kalmont Distributors and Western Building Center, which is said to be the largest building supply dealer in Montana with 10 retail stores from Stevensville to Eureka. Just as he has no intentions of quitting his weekly hikes through Glacier Park or his frequent ski trips in the winter, he isn’t ready to fully retire from the lumber industry. As his close friend, notable radio personality George Ostrom, describes it: “He’s retired about 10 times.”

On a recent Tuesday, Western Building Center General Manager Doug Shanks stopped by O’Neil’s Kalispell home to talk shop and go over reports. These days it takes O’Neil, who remains the company’s board chairman, a bit longer to read the documents because of his macular degeneration. He holds a magnifying glass inches from the paper to decipher the small numbers and words.

Shanks, who took over as general manager from O’Neil in the mid-1990s, speaks to his elder with the carefully balanced decorum of a businessman talking not only to a fellow businessman but also a revered figure. Even if modesty causes O’Neil to seem unimpressed by his own accomplishments, it’s clear everybody around him is thoroughly impressed.

“There’s no quit in him,” Shanks said. “He’s been very successful and there’s so many things that he’s done that he doesn’t talk about or beat his chest about. He’s just an amazing guy. We all look up to him.”

O’Neil was born in Kalispell in 1928 to one of the Flathead Valley’s pioneering families. His grandmother played a major role in raising him after his mother passed, according to Ostrom. O’Neil started working for his uncle’s business O’Neil Lumber in eighth grade, an experience he would later draw on when opening his own lumberyard.

As a freshman at what was then called Flathead County High School, O’Neil met Ostrom and the two started a lifelong friendship. Ostrom recently recalled an incident their freshman year when O’Neil was struck in the back by a stray bullet, possibly originating from a gopher hunter. The newspaper, Ostrom said, declared: “Little Ivan O’Neil is in the Hospital.”

“The bullet lodged close to his heart and it became encased in there,” Ostrom said. “It’s still in him.”

When Ostrom and other classmates enlisted in the military, O’Neil, the boy who had already taken a bullet, couldn’t sign up because of concerns over the piece of lead lingering in his body. So instead in 1946 he enrolled at the University of Montana. He graduated four years later with a degree in business administration.

Ostrom said military health standards changed and O’Neil was enlisted into the U.S. Army Audit Agency, where he served as a bookkeeper from 1951-1953. He didn’t see combat.

“I fought the battle of Seattle,” O’Neil jokingly said.

O’Neil moved back to the Flathead and immediately put his business degree to work. In 1954, he teamed up with Les Kjos, who operated a cabinet shop. O’Neil “thought Evergreen should have its own lumberyard” and Kjos agreed. In 1955, Western Woodwork became Western Woodwork and Supply. Later it changed its name to Western Building Center.

“Les and I were the same kind of people,” O’Neil said of his business partner, who passed away in 1988. “We worked hard.”

The business thrived in Evergreen. Buoyed by that success, O’Neil bought a Columbia Falls lumberyard from his cousin Carle O’Neil in 1972. The story of Western Building Center since then is one of sustained growth and savvy entrepreneurialism, particularly in O’Neil’s land dealings.

“He just seems to have a nose for property development,” Shanks said.

Running a successful business for six decades requires an extraordinary amount of adaptability to an ever-changing world. For example, when the industry started to turn to computers, O’Neil made sure he was ahead of the game.

Ivan O’Neil walks close behind Walt Bahr across a snowfield below Haystack Butte on the Highline Trail in 2009. O’Neil is one of the Over the Hill Gang’s founders and has scaled more than 120 mountain peaks in Glacier National Park.

“Usually it’s the younger guys who seem to take to computers, but he’s been extremely computer literate from the first day,” Shanks said.

In 1981, Shanks, Randy Kjos, Dave Lyon, Craig Maltby and Bill Schottelkorb purchased majority interest in Western Building Center. Today the company has retail stores in Kalispell, Evergreen, Whitefish, Columbia Falls, Eureka, Libby, Ronan, Polson, Plains and Stevensville. Its headquarters are in Kalispell.

Along with its 10 retail stores, the company operates a corporate inventory yard and truss manufacturer in Columbia Falls. The truss plant opened in 2008. At the height of the building boom, Western Building Center employed 235 people and now has 180 employees, plus 15 temporary workers.

“I didn’t have any idea what it would grow into, but I thought there was a lot of potential for a life-long business,” O’Neil said.

Yet Western Building Center only takes up one line on O’Neil’s substantial resume. In 1976, O’Neil founded Kalmont Distributors, which sells doors, hardware and other specialized building supplies. It’s based out of Kalispell and services the entire state. O’Neil also lent a hand when Jack King was starting up First Security Bank, now called Three Rivers Bank.

To learn about some of his other many notable accomplishments, which are often done quietly, one must ask his friends.

“Ivan is very modest about what he’s done,” Ostrom said.

Ostrom and Shanks say O’Neil was instrumental in expanding and modernizing Glacier Park International Airport. He also played key roles in establishing Immanuel Lutheran Home and Buffalo Hill Terrace for senior living. The list goes on, but Ostrom said O’Neil would be uncomfortable if the full list was disclosed, though he did hint that his friend has been very generous with a number of organizations, including his alma mater UM.

In 2005 the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce gave O’Neil the Great Chief Award, the chamber’s oldest and most prestigious honor.

“Ivan is one of the most successful businessmen this valley has ever seen,” Ostrom said.

O’Neil was also one of the founding members of the hiking group known today as the Over the Hill Gang. Since 1976 the group has met up every week during the warmer months to hike through Glacier National Park.

O’Neil estimates he has hiked nearly 600 of the park’s 734 total established trail miles. When the snow falls, he trades in weekly hikes for cross country ski sessions, while also downhill skiing a couple of times each week.

Because of his poor eyesight, O’Neil uses poles to feel his way around the trail. He walks at his own steady and methodical pace. This summer he had a foot injury and was unable to hike for a while. Once he recovered he immediately took to the mountains again.

“He keeps going,” Ostrom said. “He worries the heck out of me. I think he’s up there today.”

But over their 69 years of friendship, Ostrom has learned that “when he puts his mind to it, he just goes – by golly, he’s going to let nothing stop him.” Just in the past few years, Ostrom said O’Neil has traveled to the Mediterranean, South America and China. After his wife passed away a few years ago, Shanks said “he hasn’t let it slow him down.”

Ostrom is proud to call him his “best friend.”

“All these years, we’ve never had an argument about anything,” Ostrom said. “Something happens to me, he’s the first one there. And it’s the same with me if something happens to him. There’s nothing like having good friends.”