Ernesto Wiedenbrug was known by many people for many things.
Dr. E, the gifted electric motor scientist. The father figure and mentor, Uncle Ernie. Oregon State University’s fire-breather. Scuba diver. World traveler. Speaker of four languages.
So it’s clear why those close to him want him remembered by these titles — and not for the hit-and-run crash near Windsor that took his life on Saturday.
“The world lost the kind of soul that when you put wars, misery, poverty, hunger, pollution in one plate of a weight scale, and then you put a few Ernestos in the other, the thing gets balanced,” his co-worker and fellow Argentinian Martin Rubiolo wrote in an email to the Coloradoan.
Tom and Sonia Koetting were neighbors with Wiedenbrug for about a decade before his death. At parties, they’d play ping pong and listen to Rubiolo and Wiedenbrug tell tales of the places where work took them. Koetting believes Wiedenbrug “had the ink of 49 countries in his passport.”
