Paul Andrew Bauerlein, who grew up the second oldest child in a family of 11 siblings in Ambler, Pa., passed away on Sunday, February 18 at Chester Crozer Medical Center after suffering a series of strokes. He was 71.

Mr. Bauerlein (he was known to his family and closest friends as “PB”) grew up in a large, Roman Catholic family in a 7-bedroom Victorian home, nicknamed “Kidzaplenty Place”. From a very early age, Paul became interested in his father’s tools and engineering equipment, which he used to build various flying objects (balsa wood propeller airplanes and gliders) and later to restore and repair automobiles. Paul was a mechanical wizard. 

He had an astute mathematical mind and as a young man conjured up and designed useful and whimsical objects that might have earned him small fortunes had he ever applied for a patent on them. He built his own Soap Box derby car for a local Ambler Soap Box derby race in 1965. A year or so later, he constructed a prototype of what came to be known as a skateboard by screwing two separate ends of a discarded roller skate to a 24-inch plank of pine wood.  

On another memorable evening that long endured in family lore, he invented a hot air balloon using birthday candles melted to the bottom of a balsa wood frame and covering the wood frame with a plastic drycleaning bag. The tiny air balloon hovered about 50 to 100 yards in the air over Upper Dublin township one summer night for nearly an hour much to the uncontained delight of his siblings and various neighborhood children and much to the panicked consternation of his mother, who worried it might start a fire if it landed on a neighbor’s roof.  KYW News radio announced later that evening that local pilots had spotted the low-flying craft and reported an unidentified flying object to federal authorities at Willow Grove Naval Air station.

At the age of 13, representing the altar boys in a new Roman Catholic congregation that was being established in Maple Glen, Pa., he broke ground with Fr. Joseph Lenahan at St. Alphonsus Church. Just shy of his 16th birthday, in November of 1968, he became one of the first Eagle Scouts in Maple Glen’s new Boy Scout Troop 634, an accomplishment he always cherished and that made his parents very proud. His siblings all fondly remember that when he was in his teens, Paul decorated his bedroom in black paint with day-glo slogans from rock songs and luminated the room with a black fluorescent light. He frequently played music with  local friends who entertained family and neighbors with impromptu backyard concerts.

Mr. Bauerlein graduated from Upper Dublin High School in 1971. After graduation he did a three-year stint in the Navy that included a 1973-’74 tour of the Mediterranean on the USS Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier with a crew of more than 3,000 men, recognized as the largest ship in the world at that time.

Following his military service, he attended two years of community college at SUNY Cortland in Ithaca, N.Y. and then transferred to Penn State University where he received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1981. After graduation, he worked for several years at a computer start-up in Sunnyvale, Ca., the heart of the Silicon Valley, at the dawn of the personal computer age and later parlayed that work experience into an engineering job as a computer analyst for Bell Laboratories in Allentown, Pa.

He was a fellow who enjoyed taking chances and living life large. One event that became a family story staple for many years happened in October of 1980 when Mr. Bauerlein climbed a barbed wire fence with his brother Chuck at Veterans Stadium and sneaked into Game 6 of the 1980 World Series. They managed to find seats in the auxiliary press box in the left field stands, reserved for out-of-town sportswriters. Mr. Bauerlein took the plastic bunting that adorned the press box as a memento of the game, the first championship in the history of the baseball franchise.

Mr. Bauerlein loved tinkering with cars and owned a 1973 Corvette Stingray for 10 years that was his pride and joy and that he often displayed at car shows. He was an amateur pilot and for many years he enjoyed taking family and friends on one-day trips in small Cessna propeller planes he rented at Wings Field in Bluebell, Pa.

For nearly 20 years he lived with his partner, Grace Beattie, and her daughter, Caroline, in a home on Cathys Lane in Lansdale, Pa. Caroline was like a daughter to Paul.

He is survived by an older brother, Charles Bauerlein of Drexel Hill, Pa., and eight younger siblings: Lisa Troncale of New Holland, Pa.; Marianna Bauerlein of Salida, Co; Gretchen Voll of Vero Beach, Fla. Heidi Hopkins of Neenah, Wis., Trudy Orthey of Chester Springs, Pa., Mark Bauerlein of Crystal, Mich., Annie Bauerlein of New Hope, Pa. and Judith Bauerlein of LaJolla, Ca. His parents, Charles and Agnes Bauerlein and his youngest brother, Matthew Bauerlein, preceded him in death.

A family memorial service is being planned in the summer.  In lieu of flowers, donations to any organization that supports military veterans such as Tunnel 2 Towers,  Wounded Warriors, or Homeless Advocacy Project for Veterans would be appreciated.