Even before the Lady Bird Wildflower Center opened in 1995, Paul Reinartz Jr. was there.
Tall, creased, working without wasted motion, the retired nuclear weapons officer and master gardener moved thousands of rocks and prepared the ground for the botanical wonders that were to come.
“I love growing things,” he says. “To me it’s amazing to plant a little seed, watch it sprout and grow up to be a viable plant. I’m fascinated by the whole thing.”
For 20 years, he helped out in the Governor’s Mansion vegetable garden after Gov. Mark White decided to plant one, growing plants he transplanted from his garden.
Besides his own gardening — he lives a quick five miles from the center in Southwest Austin — Reinartz contributes time to an Alzheimers ministry at Westlake Hills Presbyterian Church and to the Bill Glass Champions for Life evangelical prison ministry.
In short, the New Jersey-born Reinartz seems the embodiment of Rick Warren’s “A Purpose-Driven Life” and its philosophy — which Reinartz embraces explicitly — that “we should not just be on the earth taking up space, but giving back as much as we can.”
The descendant of German immigrants grew up in Bloomfield, N.J., then moved around, mostly in the South, with two siblings during World War II. The adventuresome kid rarely retreated indoors.
“I loved the swamps of Georgia and Florida, looking for alligators and water moccasins,” he recalls. “We vacationed on the eastern shore of Virginia, five miles outside of Exmore, and picked tomatoes and potatoes, right along with sharecroppers just for the fun of it, five cents a basket. We got paid on Saturday. That kept my brother and me in jawbreakers, ice cream and firecrackers.”
In those perhaps simpler times, Reinartz’s mother rarely knew where her sons spent the day. Mechanically inclined, he did well in physics and applied math.
“I loved intricate mechanical things,” he says. “I wanted to take things apart and put them back together again. Still do. I’m kind of a frustrated non-engineer.”
Reinartz was afforded the opportunity to apply that mechanical curiosity serving with the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps in Germany, South Korea and Vietnam.
“During the days of the Cold War, army nuclear weapons had to be assembled,” he says. “They came in pieces and were stored disassembled. As the threat level changed, you put different weapons together and maintained them. It was very intricate work. You could not fail. We were tested constantly. If you ever failed, you looked for another job. We were always shooting for the 99.9 percent possibility that it would work.”
After 20 years in the service, the lieutenant colonel retired with his wife, Janice Ormond Reinartz, to Austin, in part because two of his three daughters attended the University of Texas and his brother lived not far away in Hondo.
“Austin seemed like a neat, upbeat town,” he says. “And I like the out of doors, to hunt and fish, sail and garden.”
He had learned gardening from his father.
“During World War II, you couldn’t buy certain food,” he says. “You grew it or raised it.”
Later, Reinartz nurtured champion-sized vegetables, including a 12-pound cauliflower fertilized with circus elephant dung that landed his picture — hidden behind the giant plant — in the American-Statesman.
One year, his vegetable garden was featured once a month on John Dromgoole’s “The Natural Gardener.”
“It kept me on my toes — and knees — for a year,” he says.
At the center, the staff has nicknamed towering Reinartz “Tall Paul.” He tends the vine bowers without a ladder and tinkers with a high water faucet that keeps him from bending over.
Reinartz was given a small, square garden in the center’s courtyard to design and cultivate. His collection of cactus and stones minutely reflects the shapes, colors and conditions of West Texas.
If something is broke, he fixes it. He once spent two years organizing the center’s pole bar with all its nuts, bolts, screws and saws. During an ice storm, he was the only one to show up other than the guards, so he washed the shade cloth to keep the ice off.
“I’m the on-call guy,” he says, almost smiling. “I do things that others don’t want to do or don’t have time to do. I make things, put up signs, repair machinery, put shelves in closets, propagate cactus by the thousands to get them ready for sale. Not many people want to do cactus. It’s pretty sticky business.”