Obituaries

Plane Crash Kills Seal Beach CEO

Brian Robertson, who ran the solar energy firm Amonix, flew out of Long Beach and leaves behind a wife and three children.

Brian Robertson, CEO of the Seal Beach-based solar power company Amonix, died Thursday in a plane crash in Pennsylvania.

The married father of three was 38. His family is planning three services for loved ones in Pennsylvania, his hometown of Toronto and California, Amonix spokeswoman Carla Pihowich said.Robertson was flying to York County to spend the Christmas holiday with family there.

``It's such an extreme loss for us. He was such an extraordinary man,'' Pihowich said. ``In talking to our executives today, we all just said we feel grateful to have known him.''

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Robertson was known as the kind of executive who was first in the office and the last to leave each day, Pihowich said.

``We always joked at the office that he was superhuman,'' Pihowich said. ``He just had this incredible drive that never stopped... He set the standard for all of us.''

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Robertson's reputation extended beyond the company, Pihowich said. ``He had this infectious way of spreading the passion around not only the Amonix family, but in the industry,'' Pihowich said.

Robertson, a Huntington Beach resident, is survived by his wife, Eileen; their three children Melanie, Brooke, and Max; his parents David and Donna Robertson; and his sister, Julie.

``Brian was an energetic, charismatic leader with such drive and ambition,'' Amonix founder and chairman of the board, Vahan Garboushian said in a company blog post.

``It was impossible not to get drawn into his passion'' for solar power's potential, Garboushian said. ``We are devastated by this tragedy. Brian was an incredible leader, and our heart goes out to his family.''

According to the website flightaware.com, Robertson, a resident of Huntington Beach, flew out of Long Beach just after 8 a.m. yesterday in his Cesna 441.

He was headed for York County Pennsylvania, but his plane went down on a farm in the heavily wooded community of Spring Grove, Pennsylvania, said Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration. Robertson was the only person onboard the flight. The cause of the crash is still under investigation, and the National Transportation Safety Board is expected to release a report in the coming weeks.

Aminox issued a brief statement on its website: “Brian Robertson, Amonix CEO, tragically passed away in a plane crash in York County, Pennsylvania, at 5:30 p.m. EST on December 22, 2011. We are devastated by this news and our thoughts and prayers are with his family.”

Robertson was a pilot and a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School. He joined Amonix in 2009 when it acquired Sunworks Solar LLC, which Robertson confounded. Prior to that, he co-founded Sun Edison LLC, North America’s largest solar energy services provider. Before Sun Edison, he co-founded PlanetAll in 1996 and served as Chief Technical Officer until Amazon.com acquired the web-based services.

According to the company website, Amonix designs and manufactures concentrated photovoltaic solar power systems that require no water and produce more energy per acre than any other solar technology.

- City News Contributed to this report.


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