While born under a hot Arizona sun in July of 1982, Tim Levesque would move to the Pine Tree State at the tender age of 5 and plant roots in The County in time for kindergarten. Over the years he would tightly integrate himself in the local community like an on board graphics processing chip. That will make sense shortly.
As his childhood bridged the end of the ’80s into the Internet age of the ’90s, his father, a member of the U.S. Air Force, made a pit stop in Turkey and purchased a Tandy 1000 SL (that’s a computer, by the way) for his son. It marked a crucial point in Levesque’s life and set him on a path to one day earn his master’s degree in information security.
That first computer would lead to many things — higher education, a successful career, and at the time when he first laid his young hands on the crude piece of tech, a higher phone bill for his parents once he discovered the computer’s dial-up modem.
“My parents were not impressed,” Levesque said of that first bill.
His self-proclaimed “clown side” made a splash in his junior year at Presque Isle High School.
For Levesque, lunch wasn’t for killing time in the cafeteria but an opportunity to work in the school’s computer lab.
One lunch period, finding himself alone and surrounded in a computer lab recently furnished with new trackball mice, he was struck with the idea of pocketing all the balls, rendering the mice useless. It seemed like a funny idea at the time.
Exiting the lab on his way to history class, Levesque made a clean getaway and plunked himself down in the back of the room to watch an educational film.
The film was interrupted by an intercom announcement from the principal asking for whoever had taken the trackballs to return them.
Levesque refused to fess up.
Bored, he pulled one of the balls out and rolled it to the front of the class.
“The teacher found it and instantly knew the culprit was in the room,” he said.
Still, Levesque didn’t cave.
“They called the cops,” he said.
By the time the police arrived, he was in between classes where he found an opportunity to dump the balls in an empty senior locker. Levesque happened to be walking down the hall when the locker was opened and witnessed the balls spill everywhere.
“It was hilarious,” he said.
Levesque’s principal didn’t think it was funny and as fate would have it, not long after high school their paths would cross again.
After graduating, Levesque “floated around” for a few years before going to Northern Maine Community College.
First he earned an associate degree in computer electronics, then a bachelor’s degree in information systems.
Levesque used his knowledge and his contacts to land a job as the tech director for the Easton School Department, where the superintendent of the school system was his former high school principal.
Levesque confessed to his teenage prank on the day that the superintendent retired. Lucky for him, they both had a good laugh.
He spent a solid seven years in Easton before finding a job with RSU 29 in Houlton. He worked two years in Houlton while also earning his master’s degree in information security.
Then last year, he applied and was hired to work as a computer software engineer at MMG Insurance.
It was a good year, with his also being elected to the SAD 1 School Board in January, celebrating six years of marriage to his wife Alyssa, and becoming a Freemason, then a Shriner. He’s now a probationary Shrine Clown and already has performed at half a dozen parades. And in his downtime he works as an adjunct professor at Northern Maine Community College, teaching computer information systems.
He said he likes what he does because it doesn’t feel like work. His work and community service is rewarding, he added. Computers and clowning around have paid off for Levesque, who has become a valuable part of the community.
