Karl Wahlberg, Wendy Wahlberg, Martha Wahlberg

I am so sad to announce the passing of my brother, Karl Wahlberg.  4-17-1968 to 4-26-2022.

He was my childhood partner in crime, mad genius, excelled in Karate, taught me some good-to-know fighting skills, and probably saved my life a time or two.

My fav pic of us! Karl Wahlberg & Wendy Wahlberg circa 1975

Karl grew up in San Diego and graduated from Mesa Community College and was quite the braniac.  During the years preceding the internet, there were dial up bulletin boards and Karl was a systems operator (Sysop) for a bulletin board or two that he personally managed, and frequented many others.

He helped me and my best friend with math in school, and I will never know the extent of his programming knowledge except to say his most recent neighbor exclaimed that what my brother had forgotten about Linux was more than he would ever hope to learn. What a wonderful compliment!

Karl Wahlberg circa 1986

Even with his more than proficient skills in computer science, Karl was keen early on to get off the grid. He bought books such as “How to Live Off 4 acres”. He saved, and then he executed that plan.  In today’s landscape this is becoming common, but back then it was not a fad. There was no internet to research and yet he made it happen.

Early living off the grid involved buying 5 acres in New Mexico where he was able to pirate satellite, haul water, and play with early solar panels and battery systems.  I always told him he was either a mad genius or a crazy man with his $20 yearly tax bill, no mortgage, and no other bills save for food, water, and gas.

While the rest of us were living the rat race, my brother enjoyed his beautiful night skies and daily duties of perhaps an early 1900’s settler, except for managing websites and the coding thing.

From Left to Right: Karl Wahlberg, Martha Wahlberg, Christopher Knuth, Branden Knuth, Wendy Knuth (Wahlberg), Dwight Wahlberg circa 2016

He did complain that piracy of the airwaves became increasingly difficult and ended up having to pay for satellite services.

Karl was definitely an apple off the tree.  He and our father looked alike, thought alike, and ended up living along the same lines.

My father, Dwight Wahlberg, who was also quite the genius, went to live with my brother after his previous engineering work for top tech companies of the day, having eschewed that type of hard work and excellent pay, and very happily so. He passed in 2017 and his death was devastating, but even more so for my brother.

While Karl died way too young, it would be a much sadder story to say he was a cubicle rat who died before ever realizing dreams of retirement.

Wendy Wahlberg & Karl Wahlberg

My take-away is that there is a fine line between a CEO of a billion dollar company and the genius of those who seek a simpler life in nature. Please look for and find the genius in the unsuspecting, and please look for and find the real beauty in life.

I am so happy that my brother spent his life how he wanted and yet so sad that we can no longer talk, including sharing our silly childhood memories. Miss you Bro!

My mom was the nicest person, generous and kind!  She was always available for help if and when you needed it.  We are all so sad at her sudden passing.  She had some underlying issues but the flu stole her life and she passed away on January 29, 2018.  In memoriam of my mother, Martha, I want to share some of her life.

My mom grew up in and around Los Angeles but lived in many cities on the west coast between L.A. and San Diego.  We fondly referred to coastal living only counting if one was west of I-5 as if anyone can afford to live that close to the beach in California anymore.

My mom played the guitar and the piano very well.  She was also an incredible violinist as a young girl up through her teens, good enough to be invited by the San Diego Symphony for an evening feature on occasion.  She actually met my father at the age of 13 as they were both violinists in orchestra.  I have never seen her play the violin and once I asked her why.  Long story short, my grandmother made her practice for hours every day and she hated it.  She said when she was practicing she would rehearse over and over again in her head something to the effect that she would never play violin when she was an adult.  Sure enough, when she moved on to college, she put it down and that was that.

A couple of funnies:  My mom’s first job was at Sears Roebuck & Co – I’m pretty sure she told me her minimum wage pay was $0.35 per hour.  Later after my mom and dad were married, my grandparents offered to sell them their house in Point Loma for $17,000.  Mom wanted to start anew and didn’t take the offer.  Bummer.  My parents bought and sold a couple of other coastal properties as our family expanded, with increasingly higher prices that would still blow your socks off in comparison to costs today.

Before my mom married, she was a physics major at San Diego State.  During her studies a professor encouraged her to apply for a physics job and referred her as “Marty,” which was her nickname.  It was a pivotal point in her life as the gentlemen who saw a woman come to interview were highly amused and pointed her in the direction of the open secretary position down the hall.  Sad to say, mom saw there would be no future in physics for her and stopped going to college.

After marriage she became a stay-at-home mom for several years.  She drove my brother and me to all of our sporting events and never missed a single one.  I have many fond memories of my brother and me singing songs with mom while she played the guitar.  We all hung out in her bedroom on the mattress, which was on the floor.  Don’t let the earlier pics fool you.  She and my father were hippie types.  There were numerous bon fire beach parties where everyone spent the night on the sand, including young children.  We also took many camping trips to Baja California, Mexico, which was gorgeous and not so dangerous back then.  We often went days, sometimes weeks without seeing other people.

After my brother and I were old enough to fend for ourselves, meaning we had both graduated kindergarten, my mom took some part time jobs.  (It was a very different time and culture back then!)  Another funny story she has in the women’s arena was the introduction of pants to the workplace.  Pant suits became a popular fashion trend for ladies in the 70’s and bosses reluctantly agreed to it thinking it might be a soon-to-fade fad.  We’re talking about the days of mandated pantyhose per the employee handbook.  Imagine if there was a section on men’s underwear requirements!

My mom ended up going back to college in her forties and received her bachelor’s degree in psychology.  She became a fiscal manager and moved up the ranks at University of San Diego at California.  She talks about when computers were first introduced and they sat in boxes on the floor for weeks because no one knew what to do with them.  We were kind of a techy family and my mom takes the credit for opening those boxes and putting the new fangled machines to use.

After retiring, she did a lot of traveling / camping / kayaking all over northern California.  Several years ago, mom decided to move inland, very east of of I-5, to Payson, Arizona to be closer to us kids.  Her back yard was up against state land and we all enjoyed watching the wildlife including elk, coyotes, and javelina, as well as other little critters and numerous birds.  After decades of having to drive hours to visit one another my mom moved into a home right around the corner from me, only three months ago.  Dammit!  Our time was much too short.  Love and miss you, mom!!!

               This isn’t so much of an obituary, but rather some fun memories and thoughts of my Dad who passed away July 4, 2017.  What to call him:  Scientist, engineer, oceanographer, diver, genius.

By the time my Dad hit high school, he was two grades ahead, which he claims was just enough to make things very socially awkward.  At the age of 16, he then went to I believe Yale, or it may have been Harvard, where he claims he majored in billiards and flunked out.  But, he went on to get an engineering degree, and really was a genius.

You didn’t want to watch Jeopardy with my Dad.  He took it very seriously and basically made you feel like an idiot as you watched him answer almost every question.  He actually tried out for the program two or three times, but his pitfalls were sports and pop culture.  I always thought it was too bad that he never made it on, but then if you didn’t have cakewalk categories, there would be less of a viewing audience.

There isn’t a book he hasn’t read.  I’m exaggerating a little bit but he was quite the bookworm and he read fast!  If you were reading the same page with him, he would turn the page before you were halfway down.  His fav was sci-fi.

My Dad alternated between being genius engineer with some dough and broke student at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

              Dad loved the ocean.  He was a commercial abalone diver and we had shells all over our home.  I recall going to the back doors of sea food restaurants and he would receive cash in pocket for his catch.  Not sure if that practice still works these days.  When the abalone was overfished, he had to switch to sea urchins – ouch – he hated that.

             I was very spoiled seafood-wise as a young girl.  I have gotten over complaining about buying a lobster tail at a restaurant – but as you can see from the pictures, I am not exaggerating about what my Dad used to bring home for dinner.

One time my Dad found a white abalone and knew of a lady at Scripps who was studying them, as they were rare.  So we were sitting in a parking lot waiting, when the lady drove up, and she looked kind of a little scared but I could tell she felt much better when she saw me, a young girl.  My memory is that it seemed like a sketchy back parking lot abalone deal.

                One time, my Dad caught a large shark and came home with it in the back of the pickup truck.  He was very proud and wanted a picture of his young kids sitting on his catch.  I thought the dead shark was disgusting, slimy, oozing and smelly.  I unhappily ended up sitting on that yucky dead shark, and I don’t recall ever seeing the photo, but I imagine the look on my face would be priceless.

            When my Dad had his engineering hat on, he worked for the companies IVAC and Pancretec.  He worked on IV medical pumps in their infancy.  His story is that he made the prototype for what IV pumps have become today.  Even ill in the hospital he spoke of the major dilemma being how to get over the issue of different medicines having different viscosities and how to make a pump that would work to factor in that problem.

I searched online for the history of medical pumps and would have loved to see my Dad’s name in glowing lights.  I found info on early IVAC pumps that used drips or syringe action that had issues.  My Dad spoke of coming up with a two wheel idea to push against the tubing, which is kind of what we see today.  But, I’m sure he was at Pancretec and back in the day companies often took credit for what their engineers came up with.

              A highlight of his career was a cancer patient who took the time to find out who had made the pump he was using and called my Dad at our home.  We’re talking rotary telephone, before telemarketing, before answering machines.  This man was dying, and he thanked my Dad for creating the medical pump that allowed him to spend time at his home with his family.  Dad was very proud.

Flip

When my Dad was doing the oceanographer thing, he made several scientific excursions including going to the North Pole and South Pole including visiting South America, and I wish I knew where else.  He was even on Flip and Alvin the submarine.  I did an 8^th grade report on Flip with pix, that are long gone.  Flip was a vessel that literally would turn from horizontal to vertical so experiments could be done.  So, everything – toilets, sinks, beds were on the floor and also on the wall so that things were usable when the vessel would fill with water at the bottom as a ballast and flip.  I believe it was scientists in Alvin who first discovered hydrothermal vents with their own ecology of interesting and never before seen deep sea creatures, which was huge news at the time.

Flip https://youtu.be/4dftaWQLtPQ

             One funny story I always loved was one voyage where the King of Sweden was on board.  You have to realize that these scientific excursions always carried nerd types from numerous different countries and various communities: people studying salinity, polar bears, tides and currents, etc.  I don’t recall everything my Dad was studying but I do know at one point he was interested in sediments at different ocean depths.  So my Dad has the story of how one day, some scientist from another country rolled a marijuana cigarette and passed it around – we’re talking the 70’s here, and the King of Sweden said that it tasted funny, unlike a typical rolled cigarette.  He didn’t realize what it was.  No one told him.  How many people can say they smoked a joint with the King of Sweden?

              Speaking of nerds, my Dad did have the pocket full of nerdy stuff, the glasses, and yes, a slide rule.  I learned how to use it as a young girl.  When I was taking calculus in college, my Dad actually helped me when I was having difficulty with problems.  There aren’t too many people in their forties that can help their kids with math homework past algebra.

            Anyone remember bulletin board systems before the internet?  A fond but now funny memory is my Dad and I downloaded a current satellite image of west coast weather.  It took about 45 minutes, and we thought that was just amazingly cool.  Circa 1991?

Speaking of high tech, other memories include when Dad brought home our first ever microwave, our very first computer (Kaypro with tiny green screen), and our first dot matrix printer.  This was back when a floppy disc really meant floppy for those of us who know what that means, way before thumb drives.  Oddly enough, in his older years, even though he enjoyed the internet and would email, he never fully embraced the use of cell phones, including smart phones or texting.  He went back to basically living off the land for his retirement, and enjoyed answering to no one.  I believe he loved it, and I am happy for that.

Last picture with my Dad

Now that he is gone, I wish I had learned more about his excursions and his engineering work as an adult.  I guess you don’t think of these things until it is too late.

Love and miss you, Dad!