His first foray into construction was in his family’s retail lumber business, which he joined after earning advanced degrees from UCLA and USC. Prior to that, he worked in the aerospace industry, and in WWII was an Army Air Corps navigator. When the lumber mill he was running in Eureka, Calif., shut down in 1952, he returned to his father’s operations in Southern California to learn the elder Cable had teamed with two partners to form a business called Angeles Metal Trim Co., which held patent applications on metal drywall trims. Three patents were subsequently issued in 1955.