Merritt Albert Birch, who worked until his early 80s and spent his free time crafting clocks, dollhouses and other intricate works of wooden art, died of lung cancer at his home in the Baltimore County community of Stoneleigh. He was 89.

Mr. Birch served in the Army from 1942 to 1946, the first two years supplying food to mobile field hospitals overseas in Italy and North Africa. He finished his stint at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, handling life insurance.

After that, he began a 38-year career in the private life insurance business, the first few years with Acacia, the bulk of the time with Mutual Benefit and the last few years as an independent broker in Towson. He stopped in 1984 at age 71 -- supposedly retiring, but instead switching careers.

Mr. Birch spent several years as a department manager at a garden center on York Road and then worked as a loan officer for the State Employees Credit Union.

"He wanted to be around people, and he wanted to keep doing something -- he wanted to keep his mind stimulated," said his daughter, Carolyn Birch Marek, who lives in Belle Mead, N.J. "He finally did ultimately retire. ... He was about 83."

"He [had] a hard time keeping still," added his son, Douglas Platt Birch of Baltimore. "Every day he would get out of the house, and work was as good an excuse as any."

When he wasn't working, Mr. Birch loved to build -- decks, Christmas decorations, clocks, anything. He had dreamed of being an architect, and he designed projects without directions, working amid wood in his basement and garage.

The 6-foot-1-inch grandfather clock in the Birches' dining room is his creation, down to the painted sun and moon that rotate with the hours. He also made clocks out of sand dollars.

But his triumph was a three-story dollhouse that he built for his daughter. About the size of a big-screen television, it has wallpaper, carpet and electricity; window boxes with flowers made of colored eggshells; bathrooms with tiny towels and toilet paper; a scaled-down photograph of his wife over the mantel; and an Austrian crystal chandelier hanging above the dining room table.

"It took him about three years to make it," Mrs. Marek said. "It's a focal point in my living room. ... I've decided that some of the furniture in the dollhouse is probably more expensive than what I have in my house."

Born in Washington, Mr. Birch graduated from Central High School in that city in 1933. He attended George Washington University for two years.

In 1940, he married his high school sweetheart, Louise Robey. Twelve years later, they moved to Stoneleigh, south of Towson, where he was active in the community association. He served as president in 1957.

He was also a longtime member of the Oriole Advocates.

Services were held Thursday.

In addition to his wife, son and daughter, Mr. Birch is survived by a sister, Mabel Moore O'Branovich of Wheaton; and two granddaughters.