[1][2] Calvert had wanted to join the Merchant Navy, but was unable to fund the £50 necessary for officers training as a captain, so instead he started work with his uncle as a dental technician in Wellington.

He served in World War II in the army in an artillery unit in Greece and the Middle East, and for a short time in New Caledonia.

[4] He was first elected to the Dunedin City Council in a 1958 by-election, beating former National MP Jim Barnes, to replace Fred Jones who had been appointed New Zealand's High Commissioner to Australia.

However when Connolly was forced to withdraw on grounds of ill-health Clavert replaced him, narrowly losing to the incumbent Mayor Stuart Sidey.

[1] His first wife, Eileen, died in 1977 and Calvert then lived for three years in Arrowtown at the family holiday home where he worked at the local golf club as unofficial and unpaid assistant greenkeeper.

After presenting a petition to parliament in 2005, signed by 1,519 people, Senior Citizens Minister Ruth Dyson announced all married pensioners who had a partner in long-term residential care would from July 2006 be eligible for the higher single rate of superannuation.