Craig B. Tate, a corporate executive who began his lifelong career with Colgate-Palmolive Co. as a summer intern and rose to become its chief technological officer and hold primary responsibility for product development, died Tuesday in a helicopter crash in the East River off Manhattan. He was 51 and lived in New Canaan, Conn.
The cause of death was cardiac arrest, said Myrna Manners, a spokeswoman for New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, where he was taken after the crash.
In his 28-year career at Colgate-Palmolive, a multinational consumer products manufacturer that is the world’s largest seller of toothpaste, toothbrushes and deodorants, Mr. Tate served in a number of executive positions, including high posts in Europe, Asia and the United States. He opened the company’s first manufacturing plant in China.
As chief technological officer since 1994, Mr. Tate had “global responsibility for (research and development, patents, manufacturing engineering technology, information technology, strategic materials and environmental affairs,” according to a biographical statement from the company.
Craig Butler Tate was born June 16, 1945, in Winston-Salem, N.C. He grew up in Omaha, Neb., and received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University in 1967.
