Charles C. Gates Jr., who aggressively expanded and diversified his father’s phenomenally successful Gates Rubber Co. before merging Gates Corp. with a British company in 1996, died Sunday at age 84.
Now a ghost town, the gray Gates Corp. buildings on South Broadway once hummed with more than 1,000 employees, whose products included the first rubber automotive V belt.
The company’s fortune left the Gates name imprinted throughout Colorado: at the Gates Planetarium at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, the Gates Hall at the University of Denver and the Gates Tennis Center. He was the driving force behind the Gates Family Foundation, which provides millions of dollars for Colorado scholarships, grants and other projects.
Charles Cassius Gates Jr. was born May 27, 1921, in the back seat of a Packard Phaeton as it sped down Bear Creek Canyon toward the nearest maternity ward. His father, Charles C. Gates Sr., announced his son’s birth by posting a sign at the Gates Rubber plant: “Under new management, Charles C. Gates Jr.”
Charles Gates Jr. was the fifth of seven children born to the businessman who bought Colorado Tire & Leather Co. in 1911 after moving West during the Gold Rush.
The renamed Gates Co. became a success thanks to the elder Charles Gates’ brother, John, whose invention of the Gates rubber V belt – twine dipped in rubber and coated with fabric – set a new standard for fan belts and other automotive parts.
Charles Gates Jr. grew up in Colorado and Hawaii, becoming as adept at fly-fishing, big-game hunting and outdoor adventure as he later became in business.
“He was an interesting combination of adventurer, almost bordering on the wild side, and also an astute businessman,” longtime friend Katie Stapleton said.
Gates graduated from Stanford University with a mechanical engineering degree. He married Stanford classmate June Swaner and moved to Baton Rouge, La., to work for a Gates competitor, Firestone.
“So I could see what the other guys were doing,” he explained in a 1987 Denver Post interview.
In 1961, Gates and his four sisters inherited the Gates Co. when their father died at age 83.
Charles Gates Jr. was 66 when he took over as chief executive. During the 1960s, he energetically diversified the company, buying into dude and cattle ranches, sprinklers, land subdivisions, mutual funds and a controlling interest in Learjet. He unloaded most of them in 1987 after suffering real-estate losses related to the 1980s Colorado savings-and-loan scandals.
“Diversification is like drilling for oil,” Gates told Forbes Magazine in 1987. “Sometimes you hit oil, sometimes dry holes, but you have to drill to hit.”
But selling Gates’ tire division in 1974 and purchasing Uniroyal’s power belt line in 1986 and General Electric’s nickel-cadmium rechargeable battery in 1987 proved to be cannier investments.
By 1996, Gates Rubber was the world’s largest nontire rubber company when it merged, for $1.16 billion, with Tomkins PLC of London.
The move, together with the Gates family investments through its Cody Co., propelled Gates, already one of Colorado’s wealthiest men, onto Forbes’ billionaire list by 2004.
Survivors include son John Gates of Aspen and daughter Diane Gates Wallach of Denver.
Services will be private.
Freelance writer Stacey Hartmann contributed to this report.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
