[We missed this when it was published last week - ed.]

Walter L. Kouyoumjian, mechanical engineer and city activist
By Emma Stickgold – Globe Correspondent / February 12, 2010

Sitting at outdoor cafes in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood, Walter Leon Kouyoumjian talked with neighbors about how to improve the lives of area residents, and politicians often stopped to chat with him.

“He was affable – a reasoned, thinking person who would opine about city issues, about neighborhood issues,’’ Boston City Council President Michael Ross said. “And he would never be alone. He was always with a crowd, a group. He was the kind of person that I would see and go over and talk to. I think he was fairly grounded. He was someone you felt real comfortable approaching.’’

The retired mechanical engineer had led a life as varied as the composition of his ever-changing neighborhood.

He farmed potatoes and sheep in Maine for a time and, while living in Pepperell, had just the right temperament to collect honey from beehives. He taught what he had learned about the mechanics of engineering to high school graduates, drawing on his years of studying and fixing aircraft while serving in the Air Force.

The son of Armenian immigrants, he grew up in New York City, and it was the familiarity with city life that drew him to the streets of Boston, where he joined various boards of directors and became a neighborhood fixture, according to Ross.