As a boy growing up in Leningrad, Mark Stellenberg was interested in how things worked: the challenge of taking them apart and the responsibility of putting them back together.
By the time Sputnik was launched in 1957, he was already determined to one day use his talents to send things into space. And once Stellenberg made up his mind about something, he couldn’t change it.
An engineer, he emigrated in 1980 with his wife Marina and young daughter, determined to provide his family with a life unencumbered by the anti-Semitism he saw in the Soviet Union. They moved first to Chicago and then to Los Angeles in the mid-1980s.
“He was very smart, very dedicated and had a great work ethic,” said his granddaughter Tatiana Bedi, 29, of San Francisco. “I don’t think he ever took a day off. He got up every day and worked to build a life for his family.”
Stellenberg’s family said he died at his home in the Palisades fire. He was 80 years old.
Mr. Stellenberg worked as an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Hughes Aerospace Corporation, his family said.
In 1993, he and Marina bought a house in the Pacific Palisades. A former college wrestler, Stellenberg remained healthy and strong as he aged, hoisting himself onto the roof of his home over the protests of his family.
Every morning until his last day, he woke up at 5 a.m., ran three miles, then jumped in the pool. The pool was always unheated because Stellenberg didn’t believe in wasting money on something stupid like heating the pool.
Outwardly, he could be brash, bristling, and incredibly stubborn, but on the inside, he was just the brashest, most loving person. He loved his wife, my grandmother, and my mother, my brother, and me very much. ”
Bedi’s grandmother had been ill for several days before the fire and had been staying with Bedi’s mother, Maya Amanth, at her home in Santa Monica.
When the Palisades Fire broke out on Jan. 7, Stellenberg texted his family shortly before noon to tell them that flames were burning on a nearby street, Bedi said. Their frantic phone calls and text messages asking them to evacuate went unanswered.
At 9:30 p.m., he texted his wife that the house was safe. Bedi said about two hours later he received a call from a neighbor saying the flames were approaching. That was the last known communication from Stellenberg.
His family spent the next few days in despair, calling hospitals and shelters in hopes that he would somehow escape. Bedi said he was informed on January 11 that investigators had found human remains in the rubble of his home, along with Stellenberg’s glasses.
“We don’t really understand why he didn’t choose to evacuate,” Bedi said. “I’ll never have an answer to that. But in my heart, I feel like he was trying to protect everything he built here for his family.”
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