Cubic Founder, CEO Zable dies at 97

Walter J. Zable, who headed San Diego’s Cubic Corp. for six decades, died Saturday of natural causes. He was 97.

The oldest active executive at any publicly traded company, Zable continued to come into Cubic’s Kearny Mesa headquarters nearly every day up until a couple of weeks ago. “Last Sunday, Father’s Day, he turned 97 and there was a birthday party at his home,” said Robert Sullivan, founding dean of the Rady School of Management at UCSD and a member of Cubic’s board of directors. “Walter was in great spirits. His mind, as usual, was as sharp as a tack.”

Zable founded Cubic in 1951 and served as its Chief Executive, Chairman and President until his passing. Today, Cubic employs 7,800 workers worldwide and posted $1.28 billion in revenue last year.

“He was a jewel for San Diego, along with the other great entrepreneurs who have created wonderful companies like SAIC and Qualcomm,” said Sullivan. “Walter is in that kind of company.”

Cubic is a leading maker of air and ground combat training systems for militaries around the world. It’s also the top maker of automatic fare payment systems for some of the world’s largest mass transit agencies and provides specialized mission support services ranging from communications to asset tracking to the Pentagon and other defense agencies.

Over the years, however, the company has been in and out of several businesses – in part because of Zable’s knack for finding poor performing firms and fixing them either with technology or management acumen.

As a result, Cubic helped pioneer several technologies that few San Diegans are aware of. It made the first electronic scoreboard, which was installed in at a San Diego stadium in 1966. It developed automation technology for elevators, eliminating the need for elevator staff. It built an electronic voting records system five decades ago.

In the early 1960s, it made microwave-based distance measuring devices and later infrared-laser systems that had centimeter accuracy over distances of nearly 25 miles. The devices revolutionized offshore construction, oil exploration, pipe laying and surveying. Both are in the Smithsonian Institution’s collection.

Cubic launched a satellite in 1964 that conducted the first geodetic survey of the earth. Later, it made sophisticated missile tracking antennas. Its technology was used on Apollo space capsules and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Tapping its expertise in precision tracking and data communications, Cubic developed the first air combat training system for the Top Gun flight school. The system was featured in the Top Gun movie starring Tom Cruise.

Through his six decades at the helm of Cubic, Zable never lost his fascination with technology, say colleagues.

“He was a technician,” said Steve Sampson, vice president of Advanced Programs at Cubic. “Walt would walk into a lab and want to know what you were doing, what you were building. And he’d get into it enough to suggest something you could do a little better.”

In a 2005 interview, Zable said is love of technology stemmed from building a simple kit radio called a crystal set while growing up in Boston in the 1920s.

“This is how I got heavily into electronics,” he said. “I’ve been living with it since fourth grade when we built the crystal set.”

Zable was born in Boston. After graduating from high school in 1933, Zable went to the College of William & Mary on a full scholarship, turning down a similar offer from Harvard. He excelled in football, where he was an honorable mention All American and played professionally with the Richmond Arrows and briefly with the New York Giants. He also lettered in basketball, baseball and track. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1981.

He married his late wife of 65 years, Betty, while at William & Mary. He received a master’s degree in physics and mathematics from the college.

Zable worked on the Sparrow missile program with the Sperry Corp. in New York before moving to Southern California in the early 1940s. He worked for Convair, an aircraft and missile manufacturer in San Diego, where he was considered an expert in antennas.

In 1949, he started his own business in his garage focused on microwave technology. The business later moved to an office in Point Loma, where Cubic made its first profitable product, a gadget that measured the power of microwaves.

Zable became friends with local fisherman, who asked him if he could use electronics to cook fish. So he invented an early version of today’s microwave oven. As Zable told the story, the cooking experiment didn’t go perfectly. “He said after that the laboratory smelled like fish for the next two years,” said Jay Thomas, vice president of finance and corporate development.

Cubic went public in 1959 and has recorded steady growth through most of those years, with a few setbacks. In the 1980s the increasing availability of GPS devices made some of the company’s core technology obsolete. In 1988, the president of the company’s defense systems unit was sentenced to 18 months in prison for bribery following an FBI sting operation, which hurt the company’s defense business.

But Zable pushed executives to re-energize the company, and growth returned. He often told colleagues “you can’t create experience.”

”Walter’s legacy will continue to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs who will recall his example, the types of relationships he fostered over decades in businesses and his perseverance in starting a company that is now a global leader on multiple fronts,” said U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-San Diego, in a statement.

In its 53 years as a public company, Cubic has raised just $8 million in capital, said Thomas. Meanwhile, it has issued more than $200 million in dividends and bought back stock. Through the years, it has posted a 9 percent compounded annual growth rate.

“Cubic at its core is an engineering company,” said Sullivan, the UCSD dean. “Walter would come across as a classic engineer who knew the micro detail of everything they were working on. He was hard-nosed — kind of gruff in personality. But he was fully aware that the success of Cubic was based on the success of his people.”

Cubic’s board of directors named William Boyle as interim president and chief executive officer in addition to his current role as chief financial officer. Walter C. Zable, son of Walter J. Zable, has been named chairman of the board.

Both Boyle and Walter C. Zable have served as senior executives and directors of the company for many years. No changes are anticipated in the company’s day-to-day business activities.

Over the years, Zable donated to many causes. The football stadium at William& Mary is named after him, as is the 4-D theater at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. He also has an endowed chair at the UCSD named in his honor, and served on the board of trustees for the University of San Diego. He held directorships at the National Football Foundation, the College Hall of Fame and advisory board of the San Diego Hall of Champions. He also was a member of the UCSD Cancer Center Foundation.

Zable was preceded in death by his wife, Betty Virginia Carter Zable. He leaves his son, Walter C. Zable and his wife Stefanie, daughter Karen and her husband Carter M. Cox, and five granddaughters.

The family plans a memorial service to be announced at a later date.