Flathead publisher to retire

KALISPELL — Daily Inter Lake publisher Tom Kurdy has announced that he will retire in late spring after 40 years of service to the Hagadone Corporation, the newspaper’s parent company.

He spent 21 years of that career at the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell. He is also currently publisher of the Hungry Horse News, Whitefish Pilot and Bigfork Eagle, and previously managed several other weeklies for Hagadone including the Lake County Leader in Polson.

Kurdy was joined at Tuesday’s announcement in the Inter Lake offices by Brad Hagadone, president of the Hagadone Communications Division, who said, “Tom has had a stellar career with our company, exceeding our expectations and goals at every newspaper plant that he ran. Needless to say, Tom will leave big shoes to fill.”

Kurdy expressed his thanks to all the Inter Lake employees for their work and support, and said he had decided that after 40 years with the company, including 25 years as publisher at three newspapers in the group, he was ready to hand the reins over to someone new.

“I have thoroughly enjoyed my career in the newspaper business,” Kurdy said. “I’ve met many good people and had many challenges. I am particularly grateful for the opportunities the Hagadone family has given me.”

In addition to thanking his staff, Kurdy thanked his wife Kathleen for her support through the years. The couple have two daughters, Kealy Boychuk and Colleen Kurdy, who grew up in Kalispell and attended local schools.

Kurdy began his career with the Hagadone Corp. at the company headquarters in Coeur d’Alene as an accountant and auditor. However, more than half of his career was spent at the Inter Lake, beginning with a stint as business manager from 1976 to 1984. He later served as publisher in Kalispell from January 1991 to April 1994, and was again named publisher in October 2000, serving until now.

At that time, Duane B. Hagadone, the founder of the Hagadone newspaper chain, described Kurdy as “one of the best publishers in the history of our company.”

Kurdy’s first job as publisher was at Moses Lake, Wash., where he served at the Columbia Basin Herald from 1985 to 1991.  He also served as publisher of the largest paper in the Hagadone group, the Sioux City (Iowa) Journal from 1994 to 1999. That 50,000 circulation newspaper was later sold by Hagadone.

Before returning to the Inter Lake in 2000, Kurdy also spent a year on corporate duties in the Coeur d’Alene headquarters. Earlier in his career, he also worked briefly as business manager of the Sandpoint Daily Bee, Bonners Ferry Herald and Priest River Times in North Idaho.

“Tom will be genuinely missed by me personally, his working colleagues and our entire corporate team,” Brad Hagadone told the Inter Lake’s employees Tuesday. “He has always been a pleasure to work with, a guy who has a great can-do attitude along with first-class work ethics.”

Throughout his career, Kurdy has taken an active role in the community, serving  on the Kalispell Area Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors as well as on the boards of various non-profits. In several of the communities where he has worked, he has been a participant in Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis and other civic groups.

He also served several terms on the Montana Newspaper Association’s board of directors, and was president of the MNA from June 2008 until June 2009. During his tenure, the group’s annual convention was held in Kalispell.

Brad Hagadone announced that the company will “go through a major national in-depth search process” to find the Inter Lake’s next publisher.

Sex offender gets 12 years

POLSON — A Ronan juvenile was sentenced as an adult last week to 12 years of incarceration after being convicted of five felony counts of sexual abuse.

James Dean Brown, 16, received 50-year sentences on each of five counts of attempted sexual intercourse without consent; 38 years of each sentence was suspended, with the remaining 12 years on each conviction to run concurrent to each other. Brown will serve his sentence at Pine Hills Youth Correction Facility in Miles City until he turns 18, at which point he will be transferred to Montana State Prison.

Brown’s sentence stems from incidents of sexual abuse of minors aged 3 to 9 years old at his mother’s Ronan day care center from July 2008 to May 2009. In June, the court issued a $50,000 warrant for his arrest because it feared Brown was an “untreated sexual predator.” He was arrested shortly after, and held in custody throughout the investigation.

By violating Montana Code Annotated 45-5-503, Brown faced a minimum of four years and a maximum of 100 years in prison on each count. He will be placed in the sex offender treatment program at Pine Hills, and must complete phases I and II of sex offender treatment before he is eligible for parole. The Court designated Brown a Level 3 sex offender, the highest level, and defined by the state as the fact that “the risk of a repeat sexual offense is high, there is a threat to public safety and the evaluator believes that the offender is a sexually violent predator.”