Dan Henson’s phone rang in the middle of the night. That wasn’t unusual.

A broken water main had sent a flood cascading down a city street near Green Mount Cemetery, battering city homes and endangering the residents inside. By the time Henson got the call, his deputy, Reginald Scriber Sr., was already on scene, taking command.

Working from a primitive cellphone, a hefty brick his colleagues dubbed his “shoe phone,” Scriber had summoned the fire chief and the director of public works. He had also hailed the man who knew how to turn off the water, Henson said. Scriber somehow had the man’s home phone number in his infamously large Rolodex.

It was that old-fashioned versatility, connectedness and know-how that led Henson, the city’s housing commissioner, to create a job just for Scriber years earlier. The vague position, ombudsman for the Housing Authority of Baltimore City, was a catch-all and would prove to have broad reach well beyond the authority.

“He had to go look up what it means,” Henson said of his initial conversation with Scriber about the job. “I said, ‘Reggie, it means whatever the problem is, you fix it.’”

Scriber, a 51-year veteran of Baltimore government who got his start in housing and carved a reputation as an infamous city fixer, died last month at age 80.

When Henson came on the scene, appointed by Mayor Kurt Schmoke in 1993, Scriber had already ingratiated himself to several mayors. News accounts in the 1980s referred to Scriber as an aide to then-Mayor Clarence “Du” Burns. Before Henson made him ombudsman, Scriber was a superintendent of housing inspection. Henson empowered Scriber to touch anything and everything housing-related.

Future mayors would tap Scriber for even more. Longtime Councilman Carl Stokes, who served stints from 1987 to 1995 and again from 2010 to 2016, said he knew Scriber as the “get it done guy” to multiple administrations.

Scriber was a man who could cut through red tape, Stokes recalled. He didn’t do anything illegal, but Scriber made things happen, often “off the books.”

Scriber was also the keeper of what Stokes dubbed the good and bad lists, informal collections of officials who may have run afoul of the mayor or had demonstrated loyalty. Scriber knew who was on each list, and that determined who was going to get help the fastest, he recalled.

“He would make sure you were OK with the mayor,” Stokes said.

Scriber proved so effective that each succeeding mayor kept him on staff, even when his no-nonsense approach would sometimes run afoul of folks.

“I know there were one or two times where people said, ‘That’s the end of Reggie,’” Stokes said. “And I’m thinking, ‘Oh I don’t think so.’”

Mayor Bernard “Jack” Young came to know Scriber after joining the City Council in 1996, well before his ascent to mayor. He quickly learned that Scriber was a man who “wore many hats.”

“Whenever the city needed a go-to, he was the face of getting it done,” Young said.

Scriber was also the face when public problems arose, many of which painted the embattled Housing Authority of Baltimore City in a poor light. When a city-hired crew mistakenly toppled a brick wall into an occupied house, injuring seven, including two infants, in 1997, Scriber served as spokesman and quickly absolved the city of responsibility. When the Waverly Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, blocked Harford Road with debris in protest in 2002, news reports said it was Scriber who descended on the area to help quell the rebellion.

A 1995 federal audit questioned the role of Scriber and numerous other housing leaders in their oversight of a $25 million program that awarded no-bid contracts to upgrade city homes. Auditors found shoddy work in many of the homes, sometimes approved by inspectors under order of Scriber.

Young said it was Scriber’s work outside the public eye that left his greatest impact. Multiple officials recalled Scriber finding housing for people when they found themselves in dire straits. In 2018, the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office recognized Scriber for his efforts to relocate crime victims.

Young said Scriber went the extra mile, often inexplicably finding funds to bury people killed in fires or other accidents. Scriber was instrumental in the creation of East Baltimore’s Dawson Family Safe Haven Center on the site of a home where the family of seven perished in a fire bombing.

“I said ‘Reggie, where did you find that money at?’” Young recalled. The reply? “Don’t worry about it.”

“When anything happened in the city, whether it was a major fire, whether it was a storm, Reggie was there with his team,” Young added. “Sometimes I thought Reggie didn’t get no sleep.”

Those in his orbit universally remembered Scriber as a sharp dresser, always wearing custom suits bedecked with pocket squares and accessorized with expensive footwear. Young said Scriber never wore the same suit twice.

Regina Porter, one of Scriber’s three children, recalled her father being frequently summoned to work when she was a child, but also delighting in time with his family. He shared a love of sports with his kids and passed on a passion for shopping for the “debonair” suits he donned. The family took shopping trips to New York City where he spoiled his grandson, she said.

Since his death, Porter said, the family has received an outpouring of calls from people who have shared ways that Scriber helped them during his half-century career with the city.

“It kinda leaves me speechless to think all of the lives he impacted, all of the people he helped,” she said.