Obituary: Lifelong Burbank Resident Richard Glen Carlborg

Richard Glen Carlborg, a lifelong Burbank resident who worked at the California Institute of Technology and built a small business, died March 25, 2026. He was 83.

Carlborg was born in October 1942 in Santa Monica to Clarence and Eloise Carlborg. The family put down roots in Burbank, and the city stayed with him for the rest of his life. He graduated from John Burroughs High School in 1960, one of those graduating classes that came of age just as the San Fernando Valley was reshaping itself into the sprawling suburban region it would become over the following decades.

After high school, he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from San Fernando Valley State College, the institution now known as California State University, Northridge. He built a career at Caltech, the Pasadena research institution that has drawn some of the country’s most demanding professional work, and he also ran a small business. The combination of institutional career and entrepreneurship defined his working life before he reached the goal he’d long set for himself.

Early retirement. That was the dream, and he got it.

He married Wanda in 1978, and as myBurbank reported in his full obituary, he spent the next 48 years loving her “as only he could.” Once he stepped away from his career, the two of them traveled. Europe was on the list. But Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii, became the place they returned to most. They carved out part of each year for the Hawaiian Islands, and that rhythm held.

People who knew Carlborg described a man whose humor couldn’t be summarized or translated. You had to be in the room. His family said his sense of humor “had to be experienced to be appreciated,” which is both the highest and most honest thing you can say about someone who made people laugh.

He is survived by Wanda, their sons Robert, Chip, and Bob, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

A memorial service was held April 24, 2026, at Emmanuel Evangelical Free Church, located at 438 E. Harvard Road in Burbank.

Carlborg’s story carries the texture of a certain Burbank generation, men and women who grew up here when the city’s identity was tied to aerospace, entertainment, and the steady ambitions of working families. John Burroughs High School has sent generations of students into careers across the Valley and beyond. San Fernando Valley State College, before it became CSUN, served exactly the kind of first-generation college-goer who needed a serious institution close to home. Carlborg fit that mold. He didn’t leave. He built something here, and when the work was done, he and Wanda took their time and spent it well.

The Burbank that Carlborg grew up in looked nothing like the city council chambers where development battles play out today, but the attachment to place that defined his life is something residents here still recognize. Families who’ve been here two or three generations share that particular relationship to Burbank, the one where the city isn’t just an address but a continuous fact of your identity.

For those who want to honor his memory, Emmanuel Evangelical Free Church at 438 E. Harvard Road served as the site of his April 24 service. The family hasn’t announced additional public memorial arrangements as of this writing.

Richard Glen Carlborg was 83 years old and had spent more than eight decades connected to this city, from a childhood in Burbank’s postwar neighborhoods to a retirement built around the woman he married and the places they chose to see together. He was a John Burroughs graduate, a Caltech professional, a business owner, a traveler, and by all accounts a man who understood that the point of working hard was to eventually stop and enjoy what you’d built. His two great-grandchildren survived him.