Philip J - age 93 - Los Alamos Bendt

Philip J. Bendt, 93, passed away Monday, July 15, 2013 at his home in Los Alamos in the presence of his family. He is survived by his wife Marilyn B. Bendt; his four children Karen Ann Sox, Paul Bendt, Dr. Barbara Medlin, and Lindasue Garner; his three step daughters, Margaret Ann McClure, Annette Chavez, and Diana Morrow; and numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren. The only child of a civil engineer, Phil moved numerous times during his childhood as his parents moved from one construction site to another. For 22 months, when he was in sixth and seventh grades, his family lived in Magnitogorsk, Russia, just east of the Ural Mountains. He completed high school in Detroit, where his mother worked as a social worker. He attended Carleton College in Minnesota and completed his BS degree in Business and Engineering Administration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During Phil's senior year at MIT, Pearl Harbor was bombed. He secured a job as a civilian engineer at the Naval Torpedo Station in Newport, RI, while waiting for admission to Army Air Force officer training school at Yale. He served two years in Europe as an aircraft maintenance and repair officer for a fighter squadron and was promoted to first lieutenant. After the war, Phil completed an MA and PhD in physics at Columbia University. In 1951, he was hired as an experimental physicist to work for the AEC laboratory in Los Alamos. He liked the Southwest so well, the Jemez Mountains in particular, that he stayed here ever since. During his 38 years at LANL, he spent 16 years in cryogenics doing research on superfluid helium, and another 16 years at a nuclear reactor doing gamma-ray spectroscopy. Phil's hobbies included sailing, skiing, reading, photography, and traveling. He was a warm and gentle father who was deeply loved by his family. The family of Philip Bendt has entrusted their loved one to DeVargas Funeral Home & Crematory of the Española Valley.\r\n

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