Peter Tibor Kelemen

1937 - 2017

Peter Tibor Kelemen Peter Tibor Kelemen passed away peacefully at his home in Novato, California on October 16, 2017 at the age of 80 after a brave fight against cancer. The only son of Mihaly Kelemen and Sari Kelemen (née Tauber), Peter was born on May 5, 1937 in Budapest, Hungary. In a life that spanned continents, Peter survived the Holocaust, escaped the communist regime in Hungary, and later lived in Austria, Chile, Minnesota, Germany and California. With an engineering degree from the Technical University of Chile and an MBA from the University of Minnesota, he had a successful fifty-year career as a mechanical engineer, which took him from copper mines in the Andes Mountains to hard-drive manufacturing clean rooms in Silicon Valley. He worked for a variety of firms including IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Peter was an erudite man and a prodigious reader with a lifelong passion for learning. He was fluent in English, Spanish, Hungarian and German and read Hebrew. He was an avid glider pilot and long time member of Northern California Soaring Association in Byron. Above all, Peter was a generous soul and a loving family man. He was absolutely dedicated to his wife, his sons, his grandchildren, and other close family members. Peter's first marriage, to Sandra Kelemen (née Savage), ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife Paula Weinberger of Novato, his son and daughter-in-law Michael and Amy Kelemen and grandchildren Laura and Paul of Fairfax, California; his son and daughter-in-law Daniel and Natasha Kelemen and granddaughter Zara of Philadelphia; his stepson Cyrus Weinberger and wife Brooke and sons Max and Will of Lafayette, Colorado. He was greatly loved, and he will be sorely missed. A memorial service will be held in Marin in late December 2017. The specific date and time will be announced.