Burl Wallace Howard

A long-time resident of Del Mar, California, Burl was a prominent fixture at the YMCA gym and in the faculty of National University and United States International University. He was born Burl Wallace Howard in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He spent childhood years also in Utah and Costa Rica before the family moved to Sacramento, California in 1945. His parents Reginald and Betty Richardson Howard were both graduates of New Mexico A&M College, having grown up in rural southeastern New Mexico communities. The family spent 2 ½ years in Costa Rica when Reginald worked on agricultural development there during World War II as part of Nelson Rockefeller’s Office for Interamerican Affairs.

Many boyhood adventures punctuated Burl’s years in Costa Rica, his time in Sacramento where he delivered the Sacramento Bee, and then in nearby Citrus Heights where he milked the family cow, raised a steer, and helped care for the farm’s pasture. At San Juan High School he was a big man on campus at 6’4”, and participated in athletics like football, channeling his father. After graduating in 1955 he married the former Wanda White and began a family while working through college. Together they raised Mark, Kirk, and Catherine while he pursued his B.S., graduating top of his engineering class at Sacramento State College and then, on scholarship, an M.S. in 1960 at Stanford in Civil Engineering/Construction Management. Years later he earned his M.B.A. in Finance from National University and his doctorate in International Finance from United States International University.

After the marriage ended he married Annika Berggren Sanfilippo in 1975. Annika’s daughter, Kristina Sanfilippo, also became part of the family.

While attending college Burl worked for the Bureau of Reclamation. After his Stanford graduation he joined the Kaweah Construction Company in Visalia, California, then the Bechtel Corporation in San Francisco and then in Maryland, building electrical power plants. He moved to Raleigh, N.C. to work for the Research Triangle Institute. In 1966 he moved to San Diego to join General Atomic Company, where he was a project manager on the marketing and construction of nuclear power plants.

After leaving General Atomic in 1976 he was an engineering consultant and a commercial real estate broker. As a consultant he used decision analysis to determine cost estimates of nuclear power plants including the cost overrun audit on one of the world’s largest nuclear plants.

In real estate and investments, Burl was general partner on several partnerships and was vice president of one of the country’s largest real estate companies. Burl taught in the graduate business programs at National University and United States International University, including real estate, finance, investments, international business, and strategic management. He was appointed investment manager for a $300 million European charitable foundation.

Burl is well remembered in Rancho Bernardo as a founding dad of Boy Scout Troop 680 that is still going strong to this day. He read nonfiction avidly, once even an entire encyclopedia. Always a fitness buff, he first discovered while on a grueling bike ride in Baja California some physiologic issues that over time began wearing down his athleticism. He was immensely proud of his children, his grandchildren, and his wife Annika’s accomplishments as an eminent research micropaleontologist at the University of California’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In spirit he adopted her Swedish heritage and culture as his own.

He passed away peacefully at home among family at age 87. His son Kirk preceded him in death in 2018. He is survived by Annika, children Mark and Catherine Howard and Kristina Sanfilippo De Vico, younger brothers Keith and Roy Howard, five grandchildren, a great grandchild, and a wide extended family.