Corwin Denney; Engineer, Executive, Philanthropist
Corwin Dwight Denney, an aerospace engineer and entrepreneur, philanthropist and trustee who applied his innate management skills to university and medical boards, has died. He was 77.
Denney, who had homes in Palm Springs and in the penthouse of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel he once partially owned, died Thursday in Palm Springs of pneumonia after a one-year bout with cancer.
A lifelong pilot, Denney was the founder and major force behind the American Helicopter Co. and the worldwide conglomerate into which it evolved, Los Angeles-based Automation Industries Inc. That corporation, which primarily manufactures aerospace components and testing equipment to determine structural quality of materials, was sold to General Cable in 1978 for $106 million.
During his three decades at the company helm, Denney acquired more than 20 smaller companies, intermixed and trained managers from them, liberally delegated assignments and melded a cohesive, extremely profitable corporation.
“When you take men from one group and promote them to another, this welds the organization together,” Denney told The Times in 1969 when the company was increasing its sales 50% a year and approaching annual profits of 25%. “There’s not a single person in this company that’s indispensable, including me. There’s backup talent all the way down the line.”
Born in the small town of Washington Court House, Ohio, Denney earned an aeronautical engineering degree from the University of Michigan in 1943. He spent the next four years in the Army Air Corps doing research and development on aircraft and jet engine projects at then-Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio.
In 1947, Denney founded Van Nuys-based American Helicopter Co. and served personally as its test pilot. A year later, some World War II friends joined him to do technical work for the government as Mid-Continent Manufacturing Inc. They began the precision machining of complex aircraft structures and making nondestructive testing equipment, forming the core of what became a Fortune 500 company.
In 1959, Denney merged Mid-Continent with the small Pasadena company Automation Instruments to create Automation Industries Inc. A score of acquisitions followed, including Vitro Corp., which specialized in what Denney did instinctively: system management engineering.
As president, chairman of the board and chief executive officer, Denney the engineer kept a slide rule on his desk to figure profits.
In 1962, he branched out further by purchasing Gilcrease Oil properties in Texas and creating the independent, San Antonio-based Venus Oil Co. Denney sold that firm to the geologist he had handpicked to run it, Eugene L. Ames Jr., in 1991.
In 1973, Denney bought a 27% interest in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, moved in and restored the Wilshire Boulevard landmark to profitability. He sold his interest to Regent International in 1985 for $33 million.
“Corwin was a remarkable man, a genius as a businessman, and a warm, modest person who always minimized his fabulous achievements,” said Carl M. Franklin, a friend of Denney’s for more than 50 years and a vice president emeritus of USC, which Denney befriended.
Denney was named to the USC Board of Trustees in 1980 and became a life member. He donated time and money to the university, funding a Town & Gown scholarship in the name of his wife, Nanci, and funding the campus’ Corwin Denney Research Building.
The engineer and businessman also lent his expertise on the boards of the University of LaVerne and Pepperdine University; St. John’s Hospital and Health Center in Santa Monica; the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage; the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, Texas; Los Angeles’ California Museum of Science and Industry; and the Thomas Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Okla.
Denney is survived by his wife, Nanci, three daughters, DesCygne, Anne and Carolyn, two sons, Thomas and Peter, and three stepchildren, Michael, Nicole and Mark.
Services will be private. The family has asked that any memorial donations be made to St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica.
