NORWAY – He’s considerate. He’ll call on holidays, remember birthdays and send cards, postcards and presents.

“He calls on Mother’s Day,” too, said Barbara Bizier.

Carlos Turcios is an ideal son to Bob and Barbara Bizier.

The Biziers forged what has become a strong relationship with Turcios 20 years ago, when he was an exchange student at Oxford Hills High School.

Turcios, his wife Ercilia, and daughters Valerie, 4, and Kayla, 2, spent time with the Biziers during the Thanksgiving holidays.

Then a Honduran, Turcios arrived in Norway unable to understand English. That, he said, made his senior year most challenging.

He said he also had wanted to spend his senior year in Honduras with the friends he had been together with since grade school.

But his mother liked the idea of him coming to the United States and he said she was very influential in his life.

The Biziers helped him through the year and he graduated in 1983.

High school was very different,” Turcios said. “I went to a Catholic school in Honduras. We wore uniforms and there were twice as many courses you had to take.

“Courses were not elective. They were mandatory,” he said. “It’s more liberal here.”

Busy, too. He was the starting kicker for OHHS football team and active in scholastic clubs.

Turcios returned to Honduras and was in college when his mother died. He had to drop out to help maintain the family.

He married Ercilia in 1988.

He moved to New York to work and continue his education. After his mother died he brought his father and brother to the United States.

Turcios owns Inter Alliance of Fairfield, N.J., which makes chemically treated paper for billboard signs. He said the technology for billboards now is all digital. The artwork is made on treated paper by 16-foot printers. Seldom is artwork pasted anymore, Turcios said; now it’s tensioned down with ratchets across the billboard.

Business has been good for Turcios. He has warehouses in Maine and Los Angeles. Along with customers in the United States he has clients in Europe, Asia and South America.

He stays very busy.

But never too busy to stay in touch with the Biziers.

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