He helped build a North Baltimore community. Now his neighbors want to honor him.

There are at least 129,000 homeowners in Baltimore, and a third of them have been in their residences for 20 or more years, according to a Baltimore Banner analysis of the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

Page, 86, is originally from South Carolina, where his father was a sharecropper. His family, including a brother and three sisters, moved to East Baltimore when he was 14 years old, and he attended Dunbar High School.

That’s where he met his future wife, Ida, whose aunt was a pastor at the church Page’s family attended. He dropped out of high school, taking jobs at neighborhood corner stores to help financially support his family. Page said he was often paid $6 a week and given the ends of bologna chubs to take home.

Page married Ida in 1957, and they bought their Woodbourne-McCabe home for $10,000 in 1965 on a baker’s salary. They raised seven children in their 1,140-square-foot rowhouse.

Thank goodness for bunk beds.

The full house never bothered Belinda Watkins, Page’s oldest daughter, who was often tasked with making sure her siblings were safe and stayed out of trouble. Though they were the only Black family on the block for a while, Watkins has fond memories of the neighborhood and their upbringing.

“We didn’t realize that we weren’t rich because we had everything that we needed,” Watkins said.

The Steinbergs helped her with schoolwork. Another neighbor used to make apple pies. The community also came together when her dad lost his job — with neighbors paying him to paint homes and do other handiwork until he got back on his feet.

“They looked out for me,” Page said. “They wouldn’t let me fall.”

Over the years, however, the neighborhood faced challenges. For a time, drugs devastated the area, Page said. And gangs. There was a period when an entire block on McCabe Avenue was vacant. Many of the neighborhood’s abandoned homes have either been razed or rehabbed over the past 15 years.

After Page retired as a journeyman baker in 2000, he had more time for community work, including a stint as president of the Woodbourne-McCabe Neighborhood Association.

He also helped clean and develop the Loch Raven Boulevard lot his church, Huber Memorial, is on and had long been on the board of Glenwood Life Counseling Center, a mainstay of the area for more than 40 years. A small wooden placard with gold trim recognizing Page’s board tenure sits on a table in his living room.

Page’s advocacy for the neighborhood hasn’t faded, but he admits he has less steam now. He commends the current association president, Phyllis Gilmore, for working tirelessly to make the neighborhood even better.

“I don’t have the ambition I used to,” Page said, but “I’m still willing to do whatever I can to make sure that we move forward.”

Gilmore considers Page a mentor and believes she is “following in his tracks.”

She’s planning to commission a neighborhood mural dedicated to Page. That would add to a neighborhood that already holds so many memories for long-timers.

From Page’s front porch, with a view of the home’s plushy green grass, his son Mike Page can’t help but reminisce. On the Fourth of July, they’d all sit in the backyard and watch the fireworks visible from Memorial Stadium. The tree that’s no longer in the backyard was a makeshift third base when they’d play baseball.

Mike Page also built the red-painted fence out back that’s still sturdy after 30 years.

The creaks and groans of the brick rowhouse when the wind blows are so ingrained in 26-year-old Nehemiah Page that they’re nostalgic. Nehemiah, Page’s great-grandson, often helps out around the house.

“The house is the story itself,” Nehemiah Page said. “It’s a great reflection of our family.”

The floral wallpaper was steamed off long ago. The pink carpet exists only in 1980s photos. And a brick wall separating the dining room and living room has been replaced.

But the most jarring change within the house was the passing of Ida Page in 2021.

“It had a different energy when grandma was alive,” Nehemiah Page said.

The Pages were married for 63 years. Plump pillows featuring pictures of the couple’s faces adorn the living room sofas.

Ida loved ceramics. There are cupboards filled with ceramic Black angels and other figurines. She also enjoyed flea markets and collected dolls, like the two iterations of former first lady Michelle Obama on the bottom shelf of one of the cases.

Page wants his house to stay in the family and says Ida wants the same.

He built the family. He bought the house and kept it, but there’s still one big bucket list item — getting his GED. He never got to go back to school after he dropped out, but he’s taking classes now.

“To me, it’s like a complete circle,” Page said. “If I do this, I have accomplished more than I ever thought I would.”