Bradley Stengel obituary

Bradley B. Stengel, 73, was born in Lake City on May 4, 1951, and died December 28, 2024, in Santa Monica, California.  Throughout his life Brad loved performing arts, music of many kinds, literature and languages, kittens and kids, traveling, and fine dining. He graduated from Lake City High School in 1969, and following two years at Macalester College, began a 15-year period of varied jobs and wide travel. He  taught and counseled children in hospital, school, day-care, and camp settings in the Twin Cities and in the Los Angeles area, where he also worked as a waiter. While gaining fluency in the local languages, he taught English as a second language in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Bogota, Colombia, where he also bonded for life with the Cuellar family, who loved and supported him as one of their own. Beginning in 1985, he held a series of jobs at UCLA and UC San Diego  as a clinic manager, patient educator, liaison between clinic staff and patients, and supervisor in internal medicine and orthopedic surgery practices.  
All the while, Brad travelled whenever he could, loving his trips to Hawaii, Japan, Mexico, Peru, England, and France, as well as his visits  with friends from coast to coast in the US. He was a life-long learner who read voraciously, studied music, anthropology, psychology, biology, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. As his health declined in later years, he stopped working and traveling, but continued to follow world news, as well as his favorite musicians, authors, and actors, and his beloved Chelsea football club. Preceded in death by his parents, Bjarne and Ariana Stengel and nephew Daniel Stengel, he is  survived by his brothers Jon, Mark (Anne Harris), and Jim (Sandy Heidemann) and niece Carrie Stengel (Edgar Alvarez) and grand-nephew Emilio.  
While living, Brad admired and supported Doctors Without Borders. Donations in his memory are welcomed at https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org.