Paul S. Houpe, a retired construction engineer known in his Brooklyn Park neighborhood as "the fix-it man," died of natural causes Friday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. He was 90.
From age 34 to 89, Mr. Houpe lived in the Brooklyn Park home he built. His family wrote that he was known as a man "who could build or repair almost anything."
For 67 years, he was a member of the Brooklyn United Methodist Church, where he served on the board of trustees. Mr. Houpe was a member of Masonic Corinthian Lodge No. 93 for 53 years.
From 1944 to 1946, early in his 62-year marriage to the former Mildred L. Skaggs, he served as a corporal in the Army Air Forces.
The couple met on a blind date. Born in North Carolina and educated in West Virginia, Mr. Houpe moved to Maryland to work in the shipyards at the port of Baltimore, said daughter Joyce Houpe of Linthicum.
As a construction engineer, he was in charge of the construction of many schools and other buildings, his family said.
A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at the McCully Polyniak Funeral Home, 237 E. Patapsco Ave., Brooklyn.
Also surviving are another daughter, Janice Jeffords of Vermont; and grandsons and great-granddaughters.
