Melvin Mortimer Eisenstadt

Former Corrales judge, environmental advocate, author, jeweler, and rocket scientist Mel Eisenstadt, 88, died Feb. 14, 2019, in his beloved New Mexico home after an extended bout with cancer. A true believer in constant immersion in learning, Eisenstadt combined his training as a mechanical engineer and lawyer in the study of solar energy law in the 1970s. He also served as president of a short-lived but visionary solar energy company, the Albuquerque-based SOLTRAX.

Eisenstadt also achieved success as a local elected official, author of mechanical engineering texts, science fiction novels, and turquoise jewelry which won several awards at the New Mexico State Fair.  He is survived by his wife Pauline Eisenstadt, a long-time state legislator and West Side civic leader, two sons, and four grandchildren.

He spent his last months enjoying the company of his wife and friends at The Neighborhood (a “life-planned” retirement community) in Rio Rancho, where he is remembered for boisterously laughing and telling jokes. However, Eisenstadt may be best remembered as Corrales’ second elected municipal judge, where he served from 1980 to 1990.  He is also remembered by longtime Corrales residents for bartering his prize-winning turquoise bolos and necklaces with other artists at numerous Corrales artisan fairs.

Corrales of the 1970s and 1980s was transitioning from an agrarian to a suburban community, meaning that Eisenstadt heard cases involving disputes between neighbors over property lines and dogs eating neighbor chickens along with other local issues.  His favorite part of the job was performing weddings that he tailored to families’ cultural and spiritual requests.  Proud moments from this time include the receipt of a cabrito barbequed goat and a Navajo rug as gifts from appreciative couples he married.

He was born Sunday, February 1, 1931, in Queens, New York to May and Abraham Eisenstadt, who migrated to the US from pre-World War II Europe.  Mel’s father died from a heart attack at the end of the Great Depression, when Mel was eight years old and the family had just moved to Miami. Mel’s sons attest that despite having not had an enduring father figure, he was a loving and attentive father, who prepared his sons for dealing with adversity, a constant in his own early life.  Mel also sought to impart kindness, compassion, awe, lifelong learning, and the idea that everyone has a story to tell.

Mel was a first-generation college graduate in his family; an engineering major at the University of Florida on an ROTC scholarship.  He was deployed to Korea as an Air Force Lieutenant.  Upon returning to the US, he met his wife of 58 years, Pauline, while briefly working in the aerospace industry in Orlando, where he helped design missile guidance systems. The couple moved for his doctoral study at the University of Arizona, where both became enchanted with the southwest.

Eisenstadt became a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he published a popular textbook on materials science, taught the Engineering Department’s first course using computers in the classroom, and served as faculty chaperone for students protesting US involvement in the Vietnam War.

The family relocated to Puerto Rico in 1969, where Mel joined the engineering department at the University of Puerto Rico for three years.

Attracted back to the desert southwest, Mel and Pauline decided in 1972 to return to the US mainland, where Mel had been admitted to the University of New Mexico Law School. Pauline, a former teacher and social worker, became the founding director of Energy Consumers of New Mexico, a non-profit which advocated for regulation of utility rates.  Mel was the pro bono lawyer who helped that group win its first legal case and helped propel Mel and Pauline both into public service careers.

In 1974 the family moved to Corrales where Mel designed an adobe home to maximize its view of the Sandia Mountains, and then enjoyed watching sunsets with his family and mixing craft margaritas for almost 40 years.  Mel practiced law, served as Corrales’ judge, and served on state boards seeking to improve New Mexico’s integration of science and technology in higher education.

After a heart attack at the age of 48, while driving his sons back from a southern Colorado ski trip in 1979, he refocused his professional life to dedicate time also to writing novels and making jewelry.

Mel is survived by his wife Pauline, 80, originally of Miami, Florida, but who has long-considered New Mexico her home, and two sons, Todd Eisenstadt, 53, a political science professor at American University in Washington, DC, and Keith Eisenstadt, 49, a forester-climate change scientist and restaurateur, whose Missoula, MT restaurant, The Laughing Grizzly, also connotes Mel’s fondness for laughing at his own jokes.  Todd has two daughters, Natalia, 19, and Paola, 15, and Keith and his wife Kristy Pilgrim have a son Spencer, 13, and a daughter, Holly, 9.

The family will host two memorial services.  One will be held Saturday, March 2, 2019, at 11:00 a.m., at The Neighborhood in Rio Rancho, 900 Loma Colorado Boulevard, NE, and the other will be Sunday, March 3, 2019, at 3:00 p.m., at Congregation Albert, 3800 Louisiana Boulevard, NE Albuquerque.  In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial donations may be made to the New Mexico Environmental Law Center www.nmelc.org/donate/ which advocates for victims of environmental degradation of the type he described in one of his four novels, Navajo Afterglow, or the Anti Defamation League of B’nai B’rith www.adl.org/ways-to-give both causes that were important to Mel.