Obituary: Richard Glen Carlborg, Lifelong Burbank Resident

Richard Glen Carlborg, a lifelong Burbank resident who built a quiet, full life across eight decades, died March 25, 2026. He was 83.

Born in October 1942 in Santa Monica to Clarence and Eloise Carlborg (née Langner), Carlborg grew up in Burbank during a period when the city was still finding its identity as the working heart of the American entertainment industry. He graduated from John Burroughs High School in 1960, part of a generation that came of age in a Burbank that looked and felt very different from the city it would become.

He went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from San Fernando Valley State College, the institution now known as California State University, Northridge. That academic foundation carried him into a professional career at the California Institute of Technology, where he built a record of steady, substantive work. He also ran his own small business, a parallel track that spoke to the same entrepreneurial drive that shaped much of postwar Burbank.

But by most accounts, the chapter Carlborg valued most was the one he engineered deliberately. He achieved early retirement, a goal he had carried with him for years, and used that time to travel the world with his wife, Wanda. They married in 1978, and the partnership lasted 48 years. Europe drew them, but Kona, on Hawaii’s Big Island, became the place that kept calling them back. They returned to the Hawaiian Islands every year, making that Pacific routine a defining feature of their shared life.

People who knew Carlborg remember his humor as something that resisted easy description. It had to be experienced rather than explained, which is perhaps the best thing that can be said about any genuinely funny person.

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

A memorial service is scheduled for April 24, 2026, at Emmanuel Evangelical Free Church, 438 E. Harvard Road, Burbank.

Carlborg’s life tracked closely with Burbank’s own arc. He attended John Burroughs when the school was already a community anchor and the studios nearby were producing some of the most watched television in American history. He built his career during decades when Burbank quietly became one of the more economically complex small cities in California, sustaining both a major media industry and a dense fabric of small businesses, local institutions, and family neighborhoods.

There is a version of Burbank that gets written about in trade publications and entertainment coverage, the one measured in studio deals and soundstage square footage. Carlborg’s Burbank was the other one, the residential city where people put down roots, raised families, went to church on Harvard Road, and worked their way toward something that looked like a life well-arranged.

He was, by the evidence of his years here, exactly that kind of Burbank resident. Not a name that moved markets or made headlines, but someone whose presence accumulated into something real. A high school graduate who became a finance professional. A career man who built something on the side. A husband who spent nearly five decades in a marriage by all accounts defined by genuine devotion. A retiree who got out when he wanted to, went where he wanted to go, and laughed as much as he could along the way.

The Carlborg family has not released additional details about the memorial service beyond the date and location. The April 24 service at Emmanuel Evangelical Free Church is open to those who wish to pay their respects.