Lloyd O. Wolf, a retired warehouseman whose love of Christmas helped transform his Hampden street into a destination for holiday revelers, died of a heart attack Monday at Union Memorial Hospital. He was 77.
Born in East Baltimore, the son of a baker, he moved with his family to the 1600 block of Clifton Ave. on the west side, where his father owned and operated Wolf's Bakery.
Mr. Wolf worked in the family business and attended Mount St. Joseph High School in Irvington. Drafted into the Army during World War II, he served with the 266th Quartermaster Baking Company in the Pacific.
He was a warehouseman at Jewel Tea Co. in Arbutus for 15 years, then at Head Skis in Timonium, before going to work for High's in 1973. He retired in 1990.
Mr. Wolf married Regina Neuberger in 1949, and two years later they bought a three-bedroom rowhouse in the 700 block of W. 34th St., a stretch of rowhouses that the family helped turn into a Christmas wonderland.
Mrs. Wolf said her husband was a jolly, happy man who always loved Christmas.
"At Christmas, I'm 10 years old again," he told The Sun in a 1999 interview.
"It was a time of the year when he and his father were able to spend time together building the family's Christmas garden," his wife said. "He still has and displays the Lionel standard-gauge Blue Comet passenger train and engine that his father gave to him."
In addition to holiday decorating, Mr. Wolf enjoyed working on his two permanent Christmas gardens in the basement of his home.
The idea for decorating the neighborhood began in 1967 when the Wolfs' daughter, Donna, went house to house putting a note in each mailbox suggesting that all of the families decorate for the coming Christmas season.
"We always decorated big, and neighbors remembered how good it looked. And that's how it got rolling," Mrs. Wolf said. "I'd do the decorating, and he'd approve it. He always made sure it was done just right."
By 1989, the entire street was ablaze with colorful Christmas lights and displays, and it began attracting crowds, even tour buses.
In 1999, when a bad back prevented Mr. Wolf from climbing the ladder to string lights from the roof, his wife took over.
In addition to the outside of their home, the Wolfs have always decorated the interior and invited passers-by in for a closer look.
"He loved being on the porch when people came by, so we'd invite them in - perfect strangers - and were the first family to do so," Mrs. Wolf said.
Many of those guests became friends of the family. The longest distance a guest had traveled was from Siberia, she said.
Bob Hosier, a neighbor who caught the decorating fever in 1986 and plays Christmas music from a loudspeaker, was the first to string lights across the street from his home to the Wolfs. Eventually, the whole neighborhood followed suit and is now illuminated every holiday season in a cobweb of twinkling white lights.
"I put up that first string from my house to Lou's, and the rest is history," Mr. Hosier said.
"He was about the nicest guy I ever met, and he lived for the holidays. No matter how cold it was or how many people, he'd invite the entire world into his house," Mr. Hosier said. "I'd go over there and say, 'Hey, Lou, are these people your relatives?'"
Mr. Hosier has marshaled help to make sure the Wolfs' house is decorated for the coming Christmas season.
"Don't worry, Lou's house is going to be decorated. The neighbors are going to take care of it. We told his wife, no matter what it takes, we're going to do it," Mr. Hosier said.
Mr. Wolf was a communicant of St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic Church in Hampden.
Services were held Thursday.
In addition to his wife and his daughter, Donna M. Hamilton of Hampden, Mr. Wolf is survived by a son, Ronald L. Wolf of Hampden; two sisters, Betty Trott and Rose Garrison, both of Baltimore; and four grandchildren. Another daughter, Joyce Wolf, died of leukemia in 1980.