Our Story: Poppy
Why Paragon Custom Homes
If you are asking Why Paragon?, chances are you’ve seen: Our galleries of luxury custom home builds. Our Universal Design home tours, that champion multigenerational ranch homes and inclusion. Our estate communities across Raleigh, Durham, Wake Forest, Pittsboro. You might have even seen our editorial articles featured in Southern Living, Architect, Midtown Magazine, Home Design & Décor. Any builder can build you a beautiful home, but we are the only builder that you’ll meet who will listen to your story and create a tailored home that is designed to take care of you across generations and over a lifetime.
We build forever homes; we build dreams; we build homes designed exclusively for you, your loved ones, and the friends you’ll meet along the way in life. We build homes that tell a story: your story. And, if you trust us with your story, we would be honored to build the setting where all the magic of your life unfolds.
As family builders, Paragon Custom Homes is made up of the stories we tell to ourselves, the stories of our clients, the story of our community. Story is at the heart of everything we do. A story can change the world; a story can change a mind, or the course of a life. When people ask: Why are we custom home builders? Why are we passionate about Universal Design, Inclusive Design, and Accessibility? We like to share our story from our family to yours: The Story of Poppy, the Builder of Family Homes. This is a story that changed our lives, and the lives of our clients, and the community we are building everyday with the work we do. We love sharing stories, and by being here and reading this, you’ve become a part of ours: Welcome! Everyone is welcome with Paragon.
In the Name of Poppy
This story, as stories often do, starts with a name: Poppy.
When Paragon Founder & President, Josh (link), was born, he was Poppy’s first grandchild. And, as such, he got the privilege of renaming Poppy (né Enloe), forever. When the family was considering names, Dot, Poppy’s wife of decades, declared how she wanted to be referred to: Dot. Just call me Dot. Everyone else does. But, Poppy was considering all the options: Grandpa, Pop-Pop, Granddad. Family rumor has it that Josh talked long before he walked, and even as a toddler was quick to say what he thought. When asked his opinion on what to call his grandfather, Josh blurted out, without hesitation: Poppy! And, that was that. The name stuck, and its always suited Poppy well over the decades of life and growing years of memory.
What we call someone matters so much, both to internal identity and to how people see them. In naming Poppy, Josh changed his grandfather forever, but also set himself out on path to the journey we are on together today, helping people and building homes. As we celebrate the life Poppy had, and the legacy he left in his family and the homes that he built with us all in mind, even those of us he never got the chance to meet, we continue to call him Poppy, and always will.
Josh Mauney & Poppy
When sitting down to talk about what we wanted to tell strangers about Poppy, Josh immediately said I wish you could meet Poppy in person. He was the kind of person you felt like you had known forever, even when you just met him. He was special like that. Poppy was about helping people, more than anything.
He grew an abundance of vegetables and blueberries, more than he and Dot could ever eat themselves, and more than their kids and even all the grandkids could ever eat. It was acres, all down the hill towards the lake. He grew that much, so that he could give it to strangers.Â
His kindness, his constant offers to help, his veggies and blueberries were his calling card of sorts. Helping people opened the door for connection. He put so much effort and love into connecting with people. Even his investments in things were really motivated by a desire to invest in people.
Whether it was building a beach house for family, or having a boat to lend to others – it was all about his ability to invest in another person. Changing a friend’s oil, sharing vegetables from the garden, long talks on the porch, being able to serve as a mentor, or even simply through hospitality – everything for Poppy was about connection and people.
Poppy knew that every person is different, and that in order to help people effectively, you have to really listen. I think that’s what I really wanted to bring into Paragon as a business, listening to people.
Poppy took time to learn about a person, how to best care and support each individual, considering their unique needs and life experiences, and it all started with really listening. Poppy did a lot of listening, and he accommodated people so many different ways. Listening to people allows you to help them, it allows you to about themselves and their needs along the way too.
Poppy Lived a Life of Service and Helping People
Poppy served in WW2. He was the Postmaster for a small-town post office for decades. And after that, he was retired for more years than he worked. Most importantly, though: Poppy was a great father, and an unimaginably supportive grandfather. However, it is his desire to help strangers, friends, and even people who meant him harm that was the most remarkable thing about him. This sense of community, of helping, was part of everything he did. Community was part of the post office, with the little candy rack he had for the kids. Helping others was part of his time in service in the Navy, where he was the cook, always serving, making biscuits, helping. It was who he was: he helped people.
If he were here right now, talking to you, he’d probably have a bucket of blueberries to insist you take home with you.
Poppy, “Builder of Family Homes.”
 As a builders, we are deeply proud of all that Poppy accomplished in a life of building projects – he built so many of the houses I grew up in and around. Being surrounded by a family filled with ideas about what made a home was such a large part of forming my view on building custom homes and my perspective working in new construction. And I’m proud to have made a family business out of my family tradition of building homes. Poppy was never a builder professionally, but he built almost all of the homes our family lived in growing up.
For a living, Poppy ran the post office in Crouse, NC. But, to his family, it feels more accurate to say: Poppy was retired forever. He was retired for longer than he worked. Poppy’s life represents what it means to live a life driven by community, not commitments or a work schedule. Poppy lived his retirement years by spending 99.9% of his time doing only what he wanted to do, and that was connect with people. Most of everything he did was less than twenty miles from where he’d always lived, so where he lived really mattered.
He developed a retirement life focused on his joys: his passion and interest in connecting with people in positive ways. Part of that was as a builder of homes for his family. But that wasn’t all – he gardened. He fished. He enjoyed cooking for people, going to church, visiting with friends and strangers alike, sharing his bounty of veggies and fish, and also sharing his stories to everyone who wanted to listen. It was in doing these things that Poppy was happiest and the most genuine version of himself.
Like a lot of grandparents, Poppy had some stories he loved to tell. He’d love it more than anything if you’d sit with him on the end of his dock and fish, while he talked about anything. He was that kind of grandfather, friend and person. When I imagine sitting on the dock, it is sunset, and the light is rippling in the water. Poppy is laughing as he pulls a fish from the water, making some joke in the moment.
The only stress I saw Poppy experience was when he had to move out of his house due to his age and health. Before that moment, everything Poppy did was to build things. He lived in an environment full of friends, but with no social hierarchy. Everyone was all from the same place, a community of similar people, doing the things they wanted to do. That’s a different life than exists in the modern day. He built community through his food and his service and his kindness, but he also built houses. In fact, I grew up in houses that Poppy built.
Poppy built every home he ever lived in, except his last.
The only hardship I ever saw on Poppy’s face was moving from this home he’d made himself. He’d made the house just right for him at the time he built it, but it grew to be so wrong for him as life changed. It was not possible for a builder to change the home he’d been in for more than 35 years to suit his needs, and if it had been possible, it would have cost well more than the house itself was worth. It was a bad situation. And while we couldn’t help Poppy stay at home, I think he would like knowing that we are helping others to stay at home, by using thoughtful design and well-planned spaces.
You always remember how people make you feel. You don’t necessary remember what people do or say. But you forever remember how they make you feel. I will remember how Poppy made me feel, forever.
If Poppy where here right now, talking to you…..
He might even offer to change the oil in your car. He built an oil changing station under his carport, where the car parked on top of a dug-out spot in the ground, so he could offer to change people’s oil anytime, and let folks change their own oil if they wanted without having to bend down and without lifting the car. It was a great, simple design.
And, he’d look at you like you’re the only person in the world right now, and you’d have his full attention. He’d have loved to meet you, because he loved to meet people, to talk to people, and to help them if he could. He’s who I’ve always wanted to be. As a kid, when I grew up, I always wanted to be like Poppy. And now as a business owner and an adult, I still want to be like him – I want to help people.
Memories are Built at Home
In his sunroom, there was a window seat that overlooked his garden down the hill. I remember sitting there as a child. They’d set vegetable plants in pots on the long window seat to help them ripen in the sunroom’s heat. I remember the countertops in his kitchen, a surface made of inlaid white tile that Poppy built himself. And Poppy’s chair – I remember Poppy’s chair. It was uncomfortable and wooden, simple like a school chair. He sat in it to stay awake after dinner, and he’d move that chair closer and closer, and closer to the TV to sit and watch each evening, closer and closer until he’d fall asleep, often during the 11 o’clock news.
I still, even after all these years in business, want to be just like Poppy, to embody his kindness and his sense of helping people.
Thank you for being here, and sharing in our story.
With Poppy’s story in mind, both his kindness and his needs, we specialize in Universal Design (link), Aging-in-Place (link), Ranch Homes (link) and Multi-Generational Living (link).
I look forward to continuing the conversation we have started here. I’m honored to have given you an opportunity to have met Poppy, even if only through my words. He was a truly wonderful person, grandfather, and builder of custom homes. I hope, through my work, and through my life, that I am building on his legacy. I think he would be proud of me, our Paragon family and the work we do together.
When you dream of a custom home, what do you envision?
Begin dreaming with our design inspiration gallery, click here to give us a call, or start the conversation using the form below. We are honored to begin bringing your vision to life!
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