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As a boy growing up in Pittsburgh in the early 1970s, Bowie city planner Joe Meinert had a great time gluing together models of battleships and fighter planes.

He also liked sitting on the front porch of his family's house playing war games and reading about the battles of World War I and World War II.

When he wanted know where one of the battles took place, he'd head inside to the den, where there was a globe that rotated. In the bookshelf was an edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and tacked on the wall were maps showing regions of the world.

His father, a teletype operator for the world-wide news organization United Press International, had pulled the maps from the stacks of National Geographic magazines going back to the 1930s that the previous owner had left in the basement.

The den became a place where the five Meinert children could spend hours learning more about whatever captured their imagination.

"Joseph seemed most drawn to these items, particularly the maps," said his father, Norm Meinert, in an e-mail. "As a young boy, he and his brother Gregory loved playing Stratego — a war-like game of offensive/defensive strategy, used to capture opponents land/possessions."

Joe Meinert said he remembers the den, the globe and the maps as "a resource room, like what a computer is today."

Maps from those early days now grace the hallway outside his office in Bowie City Hall as part of a changing exhibit he started about a year ago called "The Decrepit Old Map of the Month."

"I wanted to be able to share them and help fill up the wall," said Joe Meinert, who has a collection of more than 50 maps, most of them National Geographic maps, dating back to 1942.

Included are maps showing how the Allies divided up Germany and Austria, and maps of Palestine and Jordan after World War II, as well as maps of the countries that surround the polar ice cap and the trenches that mark the ocean floor. There are also maps of the United States, including one of the Indiana-Ohio region before there were interstate highways.

In an age when most people use a wireless GPS system on their dashboards, maps are not as important for finding one's way as they once were. But for Joe Meinert, nothing beats rolling out an old paper map with fading colors and crumbling edges to see at a glance how perilously narrow the English Channel is and how desperate the British were to keep the Germans from crossing it in World War II.

He remembers finding the La Plata River between Uruguay and Argentina, where the Germans sunk their own battleship, the Admiral Graf Spee, rather than see it fall into British hands after the first major sea battle of World War II.

He also found Saint Helena, the tiny British island in the South Atlantic off Angola where Napoleon was banished after having conquered, then lost, most of Europe in the early 1800s. For years, he had confused it with Napoleon's birthplace, Corsica, in the Mediterranean Sea.

"I never knew where it was," Joe Meinert said.

"There's really nothing there," he said about the island's exceptional isolation. "You might as well be in another world."

Immersed in maps, he also learned about the world from flash cards that his aunt, a teacher, would use to teach him about countries and capitals.

"I'd know a little about it, and that would open the door to learning about other things," he said.

Years later, Meinert knew he wanted to pursue a career in geography at the University of Cincinnati. But he also knew he didn't want to go into research or teach, and so he got a degree in urban planning. He liked the idea of helping to shape communities that are not only names on a map but also places where people live out their lives.

"I wanted to work with people and help people," said Meinert, who today is well versed in the technical aspects of zoning classifications, density calculations, special exceptions and variances.

But he also appreciates the visual artistry of mapmakers who embellish their creations with drawings and symbols that evoke the history of a country.

One of his favorite maps, on display this month, is a map of the British Isles. Along the top are the faces of clouds, pursing their lips and blowing wind across the waters towards the islands north of the Scottish mainland.

Around the edges are engravings of Shakespeare, Queen Victoria and other famous figures from British history, as well as reproductions of the coats of arms of English cities.

"It adds so much character to the map," he said about the embellishments.

Meinert said he doesn't know if there will be room in a hallway for the "Decrepit Old Map of the Month" display when employees relocate in February to the new city hall now under construction near Bowie Town Center.

If there isn't room, he said he may hang some of the maps on his office wall, where they will no doubt serve as a reminder from years gone by about why he became a city planner.

"Yes, we were surprised about his career choice," wrote his father, "but it's obvious he made a perfect choice, as it's reflected in his professional success."

vterhune@gazette.net