Zvi Danenberg, indefatigable Larkspur ‘stairmaster,’ dies at 100

Zvi Danenberg, who became a Larkspur legend for decades of astounding athleticism and public spiritedness, died on Jan. 21. He was 100.

Mr. Danenberg died six months to the day after a festive centenarian celebration attended by scores of neighbors, friends and family.

“He created community while exercising,” said Lynn Roy, his youngest daughter. “He knew hundreds of people and their names while running. He loved his community.”

For two decades starting in 1985 after retiring as a high school science teacher, Mr. Danenberg ran 8 miles in the morning and another 8 miles in the afternoon around central Marin. It added up to 74,000 miles by his own count.

In 2007, at age 82, his knees gave out. After knee replacement surgery, Mr. Danenberg rediscovered Larkspur’s Arch Street stairs on Magnolia Avenue, where he augmented his rehab and created a daily routine by repeatedly climbing its 139 steps. After two years, he averaged 3,000 or more steps daily.

Along the way, he talked to anyone and everyone and became a local celebrity. The City Council declared Zvi Danenberg Day. He was Larkspur’s “Citizen of the Year.”  As he neared his millionth step, 50 well-wishers crowded the base of the stairs.

“He’s very determined. He had a goal in mind,” Marjorie Danenberg, his wife of more than 50 years, told the Independent Journal in 2009, at that milestone. “When you realize you can’t talk someone out of something, you just shut up and let him do it.”

Mr. Danenberg became known as “the stairman,” “the stairmaster” and “the Lord of the steps,” he recounted in a 2011 documentary film, “The Runner with the Crooked Hat.”

“I hear this word, inspiration, very often, almost daily, especially from people who don’t know me,” Mr. Danenberg said. “It makes me feel good, but my idea is that I’m doing this thing because it’s a joy to me. Gives me a sense that I’m alive.”

“Whenever I go up and down, people start talking to me about the steps and I look at them and I say, believe me, there is more to me than climbing steps,” he said. “And then I start telling them about classical music.”

“I keep score of how many records I have,” Mr. Danenberg said of that decades-long passion. “I have here about 26,639.” On most weekends, he attended concerts.

Mr. Danenberg was born in 1925 and grew up in Tel Aviv, Israel. He was active in the Israeli youth movement during the years Israel became an independent state.

In 1950, he enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley to study food science. There, he met and married Majorie Milleron, who also attended Berkeley after building planes and ships in World War II. They had been married for 70 years when she died in 2023. Aside from Roy, they had two other daughters, Anne Danenberg and Eve Nelson, and two grandchildren.

“He was always Israeli to his core, held Israel very close to home,” Roy said on Sunday at a shiva, a Jewish gathering and commemoration after a death.

“I was amazed by the sharpness of his memory and his eye for detailed things,” his Israeli nephew Amir Danenberg said, recalling a conversation about Israeli history and politics shortly before his 100th birthday last July.

Mr. Danenberg was not religious, his relatives said. He was studious, driven and lived day to day.

The family moved to Larkspur from Mill Valley in 1964. He taught physics and general science at Galileo High School in San Francisco until retiring in 1985.

“I first met Zvi when he was still a science teacher,” said Mark Murray, who lived next door for 48 years. “He was overweight, didn’t exercise at all, and he would race his car up and down the street.”

“Well, we all know what happened,” he said at the shiva. “He went to a doctor for a physical. The doctor said, you better change your lifestyle or you’re not going to live very long. And that’s what prompted the running and the stairs. And the rest is history.”

“I used to walk on what they call the Corte Madera bike path,” Mr. Danenberg told the filmmakers. “I used to see people run and say to myself, what’s the matter with these crazy people? Don’t they have anything better to do than waste their time on running?”

“And one day, after a year and a half of walking, I ran 100 yards,” he said. “And I fell in love with it.”

For the next four decades, Mr. Danenberg built a life around fervent exercising, socializing and embracing community.

As in the film, neighbors and friends at the shiva recalled how he had a gift for remembering faces and names and people’s lives. He would call up friends who shared his passion for classical music and ask if they wanted to go to a concert more than a year in advance.

“The only problem I have is there is not enough time,” Mr. Danenberg said. “I wish there were 36 hours in a day instead of the regular 24, you know. Well, anyway, it’s been a great life.”