Norbert Wengler

Norbert loved music and played the violin and the trumpet. He filled his house with musical instruments which were played by his children and grandchildren. He loved to sing, and sang Karaoke with the staff and other residents at Encinitas Retirement Gardens in San Diego where he lived until February of 2020. Norbert is survived by his sister, Marilyn Roche, his brothers, Ralph and Joseph Wengler. Norbert leaves behind his wife Eileen (née Gallagher), his children, Michael and Mary Ellen Wengler, and his grandchildren, Paul and Bryan Dumesnil, Michael Tosini, Jamie Slemmon, and Julia and Melissa Wengler. Our father was a kind and gentle man who loved his family very much. He provided for us, not everything but much more than enough. Norbert and our mother Eileen created an environment for us where we knew in our bones that the world was our oyster, once we could figure out how to shuck it. We grew up extraordinarily proud to be Wenglers. We hope that someday every child in the world will have the security and pride that our father Norbert and our mother Eileen enabled us to take for granted. Norbert finished living 88 years the other day, not long after tell...[more]

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g his favorite daughter Mary Ellen that he was feeling great. He went peacefully while eating lunch surrounded by people who had been caring for him. He survived six months of isolation in a skilled nursing facility that COVID-19 imposed on the elderly. Things got a little better in his final month and we were lucky to see him a few times and talk to him on facetime many times before he passed. We know he is happy that two days before he passed, he was visited by a Roman Catholic Priest who gave him Last Rites. Norbert was a devout Roman Catholic his whole life and attended Mass whenever he could, even after he could no longer walk. In his prime he was a 4th degree member of the Knights of Columbus, serving in numerous offices including a year as the Grand Knight of Holy Innocents Council in Levittown, New York. Norbert was a proud member of Alcoholics Anonymous, sober for 25 years. Our father was an accomplished Electrical Engineer who could fix, as far as we could tell, anything. His education included Brooklyn Tech High School, City College of New York, and he earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the good Fathers at Manhattan College in the Bronx. Norbert grew up in Glendale NY active in Sacred Heart Parish with his siblings and his parents Mary Josephine (née Hufnagel) and Joseph John Wengler. Not long after graduating college, he married Eileen Gallagher and moved to Levittown NY where they lived for five years with their little babies. They then spent 50 years in Farmingdale, NY. In 2011 they joined their children in San Diego, California where his wife, children, and most of his grandchildren still reside. Norbert worked as an Electrical Engineer for 40 years before retiring in 1992. His career included work for the U.S. Army, Sperry Gyroscope, and for a very long time, Grumman Aerospace Corporation where his son now works as an Electrical Engineer. His proudest accomplishment technically was to help design, build, and support the Lunar Module (LM) which starting in 1969 was the first and only space ship to ever carry human beings to walk (and drive an electric car) on the moon.