Paul Richard Prevo, who worked his way from a log cabin in the Ozarks to become a respected nuclear engineer and health physicist, died with family at his side on May 3, 2025, at his home in Richland, WA. He was 85 and beloved by many.

Paul was born on January 19,1940, during a blizzard so severe the doctor wouldn’t travel to the family’s one-room log cabin outside Verona, Missouri. His parents, Glen Willis Prevo (a carpenter) and Jeanne Alberta Kline (a school teacher), worked hard to provide for their four children: Charles, Paul, Karen, and Linda.

Paul started work early, picking strawberries and tomatoes with his brother, Charles, eight to ten hours a day. Paul said they got a nickel a quart for the strawberries and could pick twenty to thirty quarts a day, although the girls picked faster and earned more than he and his brother. Fortunately, he figured out it was easier and more profitable to raise pigs and gave up picking strawberries. Through high school and college, he worked construction, which he said was great motivation to continue his schooling.

Paul graduated from Kansas State University with a bachelor’s degree in Nuclear Engineering. He arrived in Richland, Washington, for his first engineering job at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation with a single duffel bag of belongings after surviving a T-bone collision with a semi-truck. His quick reflexes (duck!) saved his life but not the top of his car. After a brief courtship, he married Merle Jensen, who became his devoted wife of 59 years.  There was no point waiting long to marry as they both knew right away they were meant for each other.

Paul and Merle moved to Seattle where Paul completed his master’s degree in Radiological Health at the University of Washington. They next moved to Las Vegas, where he worked at the Nevada Test Site, part of a team conducting underground nuclear weapons testing. He once got to experience “the earth moving like waves of water” when he stepped outside the test van, parked seventeen miles from ground zero. While living in Nevada, Paul and Merle welcomed their two children, Jonathan Glen and Laura Jean, who grew up to admire and adore their patient father. Shortly after Laura’s birth, they moved back to Merle’s hometown of Richland, Washington, where Paul worked for decades as a health physicist at the Fast Flux Test Facility, a 400-megawatt liquid-metal-cooled nuclear research and test reactor.

Paul was a down-to-earth, pragmatic man with a corny sense of humor and a deep streak of frugality that never went away. He walked or biked most days and was delighted to get a free bus pass when he turned 65 so he could bus for free to get his cup of coffee and read the newspaper. He loved to be in the kitchen, bought himself the “Pinto Bean Queen” cookbook as a bachelor, and kept cooking and baking after marriage. He was known for his Sunday bread (made with his own fresh-ground wheat), cinnamon rolls (the first to disappear at church potlucks), apple pie, and chili.   Paul used his construction skills and persistence to bring Merle’s home designs to life. He built a sunken family room with exposed wood beams and a brick chimney, a detached carriage house he used as his woodworking shop, a delightful hobbit house (some would call it a shed) complete with Merle’s own stained glass windows, and so many other projects he once questioned whether he ever should have let on that he knew how to use a hammer. He hiked the Pacific Crest Trail by himself, decades before it became social-media popular, and continued camping into his 70s, sometimes with an eager grandchild or two in tow. Paul volunteered with the Kadlec Auxiliary, delivering the mail weekly throughout the hospital with Merle for nearly twenty years.

During the last years of his life, Paul suffered from and ultimately passed away from Lewy body dementia.

Paul’s son, Jonathan, died in 2022. Paul is survived by his wife, Merle; daughter, Laura; seven grandchildren; his three siblings; and much-loved in-laws, nieces, nephews, and friends.

A memorial service will be held at 1 pm on Saturday, June 14th, at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (1321 Jadwin Ave, Richland WA), followed by a graveside dedication of his ashes at Sunset Gardens (915 Bypass Highway, Richland WA).

The family would like to express their gratitude to Heartlinks hospice care for the compassionate support they provided in Paul’s final days.