I first met Paul when I was about nine years-old. Some of us kids on Brookwood had been building a fort in the lot that would become his house. One summer morning a guy with glasses was walking around in that lot, he seemed annoyed. My mom happened to be out in the backyard with me and my sisters and he called her over and asked her if she knew anything about "All this junk on my property." My mom shot me a glare and promised him it would be cleaned up. "I hope so" he retorted and walked away. We still laugh about it to this day: it was such a an abrupt impression with someone who would turn out to be one of my favorite people in the world. At age nine this made me think the new guy might be a "meanie". But one evening, after his house was built and he had finished moving in from Lexington, I was trying to fly a model plane I'd just built on the fairway, Paul was in his backyard. He called me over, I remember thinking I might be in trouble ... "Can I see that?" he said, pointing to the plane. I handed it over, it was a glider, built from a kit of balsa wood and paper. He hefted it in his hands, "This is pretty neat, did you build it?" I nodded my head. "It's really nice, but I think your center of gravity is a little too far back, that might be why it was stalling. But I think we can fix that pretty easy. Come mere ..." I followed him into a room right off his garage, he opened up a desk drawer and it was filled with perfectly maintained model airplane engines and tools. My jaw about hit the floor, at my age with limited allowance, that collection of engines was like a goldmine. Paul put a lead weight on the nose of my plane, handed it back to me, and said to give it a try now. Sure enough, it flew like an eagle. Over the next few years I'd go over to his house regularly to talk about airplanes, and he wasn't just being kind, I could tell, He *liked* that stuff. A boyish excitement wouls shine through, my guess is Paul was a mechanical engineer to the core, and even at that young age I realized far form being a "meanie" he was super nice, and a kindred spirit of sorts for a nerdy kid like me who like to build thigns. That Christmas he even gave me a hand written note, on one of those blue graph paper pads all the IBM engineers carried back in the 70s, that read in Paul's iconic engineer print "Good for one free model engine of your choice." When I took my first college engineering course, physics 1, you better believe it was Paul went to when I had a problem I couldn't figure out. Just like model airplanes, he actually liked physics and math. I had a take home final that year, 20 problems, and of course this is way, way before the Internet was a gleam in Bill Gates' eye. I showed up at Paul's house, book in hand, somewhat desperate, he invited me in, and we set down at his kitchen table and cranked through everyone of those problems for four hours straight. I got an A on the final and an A in the class. Paul was more than just a neighbor to me, he was a friend, the first adult friend I ever had, and he was a great role model for someone interested in science and engineering.