ROCKPORT — It’s snowing again and plowers are back in business after a dry spell. The more seasoned are gauging the storm, checking their iPhones, listening to radios, and timing their patrols by how the precipitation presents. For Steve Beveridge, who has been Rockport’s longtime Public Works Director, this Valentine’s Eve storm is yet another in many decades of grappling with Maine winter weather; nonetheless, this snow, dubbed the Superstorm, or Blockbuster, by television editors in the mid-Atlantic, is the kind of storm when Rockport’s eight public works employees work around the clock, taking scheduled breaks on cots set up in the town garage, or rest in recliners that ring their break room.

Back in 2001, I took a ride with Rockport’s Public Works Director Steve Beveridge as he plowed the town’s road during a March snowstorm, sitting in the cab of his Ford F350, where we talked a lot, mostly about local politics and a little about gardening.

Thirteen years and three Fords later, I was back riding shotgun, and we resumed the conversation. This time, however, we talked more about gardening and less about politics. Beveridge had seen a mess of town leaders come and go, and now was on the home stretch of a 27-year career as Rockport’s public works director. Mike Young, his successor, was ready to take over.

Young had been training for two years under Beveridge, and now they were on the cusp of the leadership change. Beveridge was looking forward to it.

“Mike will be the boss,” he said. Then he grinned: “I’m going to work for Cheryl.”

Cheryl is his wife and she has been chief manager at Beveridge Farm (as well as longtime school athletic coach), on Turnpike Drive (Route 52) in Camden, for decades while Steve headed up the team that tends to Rockport’s sprawling geography, its 65-plus miles of town-owned roads that are criss-crossed by three federal and state arterial highways. In a quasi-rural/suburban town like Rockport, with its five villages, neighborhoods and multiple mountainside subdivisions, the upkeep of roads is paramount.

The town’s hills, from West Rockport to the harbor-ringed Rockport Village, can be steep and no one, especially a fire truck or ambulance, wants to wind up in the ditch. (A piece of incidental knowledge: Franklin Street in Rockport Village, which rises across from Union Hall, is the town’s most formidable incline with a 16 percent grade.)

Rockport is known for having well-maintained roads; even its dirt road that climbs Mt. Pleasant in West Rockport is a model of municipal road care, and one that the Maine Department of Transportation cites when talking about good dirt road maintenance. And residents there don’t hunker down for the winter: They are doctors at Pen Bay Medical Center, or lawyers who need to get to court, or business owners who keep area stores and restaurants humming. They need passable roads during storms, and expectations run high to get out the house at any hour.

It wasn’t always like that, however. The town used to be primarily agricultural, with its maritime industrial hub at the harbor.

“I can remember Route 1 being closed off for a day and half during a snowstorm,” said Beveridge, who first began plowing snow in 1966. He was in the military from 1967 to 1971, and in 1968-1969, he was gone from the area for more than a year, serving in Vietnam as a pilot aboard UH-1C helicopters and receiving citations for his unwavering service. Beveridge earned a Distinguished Flying Cross for heroic action defending a Thai defense post from three battalions of North Vietnamese forces. He flew 25 missions and received a citation for bravery in Oct. 1968. Before returning to Rockport, he taught defense tactics to new pilots and was promoted to Company Air Commander Instructor.

In the late 1980s and first decade of this century, Rockport Public Works grew to accommodate residential demand for services. In 1985, there were 13 dead-end roads in Rockport; by 2000, there were 29 of them.

But roads and culverts are only part of public works’ purview. Rockport has five villages, multiple parks, public institutions, including an aging and temperamental opera house, and 2,000-plus property owners who can be, at times, imperiously demanding. Those who work in Rockport’s town government are used to this and tend to shrug it off; however, Steve Beveridge has gone the extra mile, handling it all with aplomb and diplomacy.

“The community is a great mix of people,” said Beveridge. “Many come from areas not in snow belts. I get phone calls about snow, where to push it, how to move it. We have 700 mailboxes in town; last winter we had four complaints.”

Through hundreds of select board workshops and meetings, and dozens of annual town meetings, Beveridge has been a constant voice of common sense. With his quiet dignity and understated humor, he will rise out of his chair — usually in the back of the room — and deliver measured and rational explanations for public works projects and purchases.

“He’s been great for the town,” said Rockport’s Code Enforcement Officer Scott Bickford. “I’ve worked with him on a number of plumbing and heating jobs. He has a lot of historical knowledge and experience, and he’s always been accommodating and conscientious. I’d watch him bleed at the gum line as his worked to keep his personal opinions to himself.”

“Steve is a gem, a perfect balance of technical skill and good old Maine common sense,” said Rockport Town Manager Rick Bates. “He is a great source of ‘a little bit of history’ and a wealth of knowledge about all things Rockport.”

That know-how has been passed onto Mike Young during the long intentional transition period. Young appreciates the institutional knowledge that Beveridge has given him.

“Steve takes such pride in his work,” said Young. “It has been great to come in and not have a bunch of things to straighten out. He has given me a lot and the way the transition went, it’s been good for the town.”

Young’s background is also in roads, having worked in design and development for private companies.

“We see eye to eye,” he said. “I agree with him 90 percent of the time. That part has been really good.”

Beveridge started plowing snow 47 years ago as a young man in a 1938 truck that was heated by a Coleman stove. He sat on a phone book in that truck, working the gears and moving the snow drifts to the roadsides. The storm of 1978 dropped two feet of snow on Rockport, and a 14-foot drift blocked Vinal Street.

At the time, the town owned but two front-wheel plow trucks, and one broke down during the storm. Then Public Works Director Gary Leighton called his brother, Teddy, in Monroe, who came down to Rockport with their father’s Ford Snow Fighter.

By the 1990s, Rockport’s equipment line grew, and the town now owns three Ford 550s, two Freightliners and an International. In 1997, the town bought a used 470-horsepower Oshkosh (full of sand, it weighs 21 tons) with 56,000 miles on it for $175,000. It was a large purchase for the town at the time, but Beveridge, then Town Manager Don Willard, and a practical board of selectmen agreed the investment would last for some time. 

“We took a lot of criticism for spending money on it,” said Beveridge. But 80,000 miles and 6,000 work hours later (every hour equates to 40 miles of use), the Oshkosh continues to keep West Rockport roads clear.

“Plowing snow will wear a truck out three times quicker than hauling gravel,” he said. “It’s not a lucrative business.”

Public Works employee James Aldus is the sole driver of the Oshkosh. At age 54, he is now Rockport’s longest tenured employee following the retirement of former Fire Chief Bruce Woodward. Aldus started working for the town when he was 18. He helps keep Rockport Public Works steady and consistent, along with James Miller, Daryl Libby, Kevin Grierson, Greg Howard, Russell Fuller, Beveridge and Young. 

In a recent snowstorm a week ago, Beveridge tended to the municipal parking lots of the Public Safety Building and the Town Office. The snow was light, but just enough to prompt state and town offices and agencies to close shop early. 

“This is one of those storms that is just a nuisance,” he said. “We just need to go around and keep people safe.”

While inhabitants of northern latitudes are known to talk about weather, plowmen talk about the characteristics and behavior of snow. They concentrate in windrows, the snow that is left in long, narrow piles on the side of the road. They talk about snow tornadoes — “I’ve seen 30 of them going across fields, with the snow being sucked up and dumped,” said Beveridge. There’s rime ice, a white hollow ice that builds on top of snow; there’s powder, greasy snow, slush, black ice, sleet and plain old ice.

Then his cell phone rang.

“This is an important call,” he said. “This is my wife.”

They have been married 42 years.

“She’s used to being her own boss,” said Beveridge. “I’m used to being a boss.”

Now they are going to focus on expanding their crops at Beveridge Farm.

“We don’t want to hire help, except kids who want to work,” he said. “We want to work smarter, not harder.”

Besides big, beautiful strawberries, which Beveridge Farm is known for, they are going to grow salad greens, dill, cilantro, basil, tomatoes (last summer, they harvested 4,000 to 5,000 tomatoes), beets and carrots.

As for absolute retirement, that’s still a long shot away, and Rockport residents will still see him around town.

“As long as I am healthy, I am going to do whatever I want to do,” he said.

Bates hopes Beveridge will stick around to help with the Mill Street bridge rebuild, a $500,000 project that the state has thrust on the town.

“The town has been lucky to have him as a dedicated employee all these years and our roads and infrastructure are a testament to his hard work,” said Bates. “The good news is we still have him at least for a while and I plan to drain every piece of information and Steve –isms out before he does really retire.

Editorial Director Lynda Clancy can be reached at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657.