Norm Allbright, an instructional lab technician at Mesa College, known by colleagues for his quirky personality and genius qualities, died on March 22 at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in San Diego of pneumococcal meningitis; he was 59.

“He wasn’t quirky weird, he was quirky cool,” said colleague Michael Davis.
“You could live 10 lifetimes and not come across someone as original as Norman.”

Allbright marked the campus with an original combination of quirkiness, loyalty and extraordinary intelligence. He was an instructional lab tech in Room K401 and worked alongside Bob Anderson. Anderson said that Allbright was an amazing talent when it came to computers, and could always solve any issue that the students and other employees were confronted with.

He had multitude of hobbies including: coin collecting, jazz and classical music, computers and ham radio. He also loved entertainment, and was an avid sports fan, theater lover and moviegoer. Anderson said that a recent obsession of Allbright’s was the movie “Across the Universe” and said that Allbright had seen it at least 40 times in the theater. Allbright even started a discussion thread on imdb.com regarding the movie.

Norman Allbright was born in San Diego in 1948 to London and Sybil Allbright. His father was a pilot in the Air Force, and their small family, including London and Sybil and their two children Norm and Carol, moved around frequently. Allbright spent many of his early years in San Diego, but attended Yamato High School, in Japan, in 1966. He then went to college at the University of New Mexico, and the University of Hawaii.

He was also well known for his keen knowledge, specifically his knowledge of cosmology, physics, computers and astronomy. He was a member of Mensa, an elite society that only extends membership to people whose IQs are in the top two percentile of the population. Allbright had an intense love for knowledge and chose to surround himself with people and books that would expand that knowledge.

Allbright never got his degree, but according to Davis, he was uninterested in being recognized for his intelligence in any formal way.

When Allbright was 40, he got a job at Mesa through its Computer Science program, and had been working for Mesa for over 19 years. It was here that he met Anderson and Davis, and worked with them for over 10 years. When Allbright’s mother died in 2005, Anderson became Allbright’s housemate.

“Norm was generous to a fault.and would help anybody who needed it,” Anderson said.