Lewis Gale Abels was born 18 Aug 1927 in Sutherland, Iowa. Fascinated with airplanes at an early age, Abels joined the Army Air Corps at the age of seventeen. After returning from active duty at the age of twenty, he entered the University of Minnesota where he earned a Bachelors degree in Architecture in 1950. Abels married Marilyn Joyce and they had three daughters. He then entered Harvard’s Graduate School of Design where he studied under Walter Gropius and received a Master of Architecture in 1952.

After graduation, Abels worked in Boston and Cambridge, Massachussetts before moving to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan where he worked for Eero Saarinen and Associates from 1954 to 1958. Abels then relocated to Colorado, where he was employed at W.C. Muchow Associates in Denver before starting his own practice, L. Gale Abels and Associates in Boulder, Colorado in 1963. Abels was also a lecturer at the University of Colorado at Boulder's School of Architecture and used students in the architecture program as interns at the firm. Abels’ projects included residential design, commercial buildings, and several airports.

Abels was an avid glider, building gliders as well as flying them. He was the first to fly a glider across the Rocky Mountains and was a founding member of the Soaring Society of Boulder in 1959. Abels designed several glider planes and wrote numerous articles for soaring publications. Several of his architectural commissions in Colorado were inspired by his love of flight. After a battle with leukemia, Abels passed away in Boulder 26 Sep 1995, shortly after attending the Saarinen-Swanson Reunion at Cranbrook.

Significant ES&A projects on which he worked include: General Motors Technical Center, Concordia Senior College, and the Milwaukee County War Memorial. Gale Abels passed away in Boulder, Colorado, in September, 1995, shortly after attending the Saarinen Office Reunion at Cranbrook.