Abels was born in Iowa in 1927 and received his bachelor's degree in architecture in 1950 from the University of Minnesota.  He went on to graduate school at Harvard, where he was able to study under Walter Gropius and get his Master's in 1952.  From 1954 until his move to the Denver area in 1958 he worked for Ero Saarinen in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.  A local newspaper article from 1962 noted that he had served in the Army Air Corps during World War II (it must have been very late in the war), so I think I know a part of the reason for his life-long interest in flying and soaring.  Soaring was an award-winning and record-setting hobby for him, and so his projects for several structures at local airports-Aero Associates at Jeffco and Arapahoe County Airport Control Tower) are not surprising.

 

Here are some of Abels' Boulder projects: