Littleton inventor and entrepreneur Stephan E. Gavit built a multimillion-dollar business from his garage and loved to fly – vowing to a friend he’d never die in a crash.
On Saturday night, Gavit, 62, and three passengers died in a Douglas County plane crash as he piloted his Cessna back from a fishing trip in Idaho, according to family friends.
Officials on Sunday had not released victims’ names.
But the family of Ken Magid, 59, a Golden psychologist, said Magid was on board the plane with Gavit.
Magid was returning from Idaho, where he had interviewed Dr. Forrest Bird, inventor of a medical respirator, for a project about how to live healthy, said his son Aaron Magid.
“Magid had a passion for life and a joy for helping others. He will be deeply missed by his family and those whose lives he touched,” Aaron Magid said in a prepared statement.
The son called his father “an amazing man.”
“I’ve never seen a man with so many passions,” he said.
Among those passions, as enumerated on Ken Magid’s website:
Having taught sociology, education and psychology at five colleges since 1969.
Having treated children, adolescents and adults for 30 years as a clinical psychologist.
Being a documentary filmmaker, garnering awards and an Emmy nomination for a film about American women pilots during World War II.
Being a former reporter for the Tampa Times, a stringer for Newsweek and a Sunday columnist for 10 years for the Rocky Mountain News.
Gavit was close to his family, especially to his teenage grandson, who was one of the passengers, according to his friends. Family at his house in Morrison declined to comment.
Gavit’s grandson was the “dearest thing in the whole world” to him, said Dawn Lawrence, a friend of Gavit.
Gavit owned a helicopter and a plane and has survived three helicopter crashes, Lawrence said. He told Lawrence, whom he dated for a year and a half, that dying in a plane was never the way he would go.
“He was the most cautious, cautious pilot,” she said.
Friends and colleagues said Sunday that Gavit worked doggedly to carve a name – and a fortune – for himself in the electronics business.
Gavit started manufacturing out of his garage and built that into Littleton-based Accutronics Inc., according to his plant manager, Buddy Lewis.
Since Accutronics’ start in 1976, Gavit had built a business with 80 employees that generated about $53 million in sales, according to the Thomson Gale company intelligence database.
“He is the Horatio Alger of our time,” said Richard Kaudy, Gavit’s attorney the past three years. “He started by sweeping off a machinists’ floor in Denver, had less than an eighth-grade education and became a multimillionaire.”
Lewis, who worked for Gavit for 16 years, was at the crash scene Sunday, where the plane was scattered in charred heaps.
“I just couldn’t believe that he could crash,” Lewis said.
Staff writer Kieran Nicholson contributed to this report.
