40-year JPL Engineer Robert (Bob) Wood Sniffin, 1940-2015

Longtime Monrovian Robert (Bob) Wood Sniffin, a systems engineer with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory since 1969, died August 6 after a long illness, his wife, Hilda, and son, Michael, at his side.

A memorial service will be held at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, August 21, at Saint Luke the Physician Episcopal Church, 122 S. California Ave. at Foothill Blvd. in Monrovia. Interment will be at Turner & Stevens Live Oak Mortuary, 200 East Duarte Road, Monrovia. A noon reception will follow at St. Luke’s.

Sniffin was born and raised in New York until age 13, when his family moved to Florida. After earning a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Florida, he joined Texas Instruments in Dallas, spending the next six years developing terrain-following radar systems.

In 1969, Sniffin moved to Southern California and became a systems engineer with JPL’s Deep Space Network — just initiating its focus on large, complex, one-of-a-kind space missions including the Voyager, Viking, Galileo and Cassini-Huygens projects. His long career included a two-year assignment at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC. After retiring in 2009, he continued to work as an independent contractor with JPL until his death.

Sniffin was a choral singer and member of Saint Luke the Physician Episcopal Church in Monrovia.