Memorial Scheduled for Innovator Staudte

Juergen Staudte, a onetime Orange County businessman and inventor who played a pivotal role in the development of quartz crystals for digital watches and other timing devices, will be memorialized Wednesday at Fullerton’s Evangelical Free Church.

Staudte, 61, was killed May 19 when the twin-engine plane he was piloting crashed at an airport in Tucumcari, N.M.

“He was brilliant, friendly and very down-to-earth,” longtime friend Bob Sackett of Anaheim said of the East German immigrant, who founded several companies and was generally regarded as a guru of the quartz crystal industry.

Staudte began that career in 1969 with the founding in Orange of Statek Corp., an electronic components firm still in business. Among other things, he invented a device that greatly improved the performance of quartz watches and developed a method for mass-producing the crystals.

Later he started a company called Xeco and, in 1989, moved it to Cedar City, Utah, where it has become a major manufacturer of quartz crystals for use in electronic timing devices.

Staudte is survived by his wife, Marci; children, Kendra and Kevin of Anaheim Hills, and Keith of Cedar City; mother, Ella Staudte of Anaheim Hills; and sisters, Ute Norris and Heidi Turner, both of Yorba Linda.

Wednesday’s service is set for 3 p.m. at the Evangelical Free Church, 2801 N. Brea Blvd., Fullerton.