Bill Gates Sr, Father Of Microsoft’s Co-Founder, Passes Away At 94; Check Unknown Facts About The Philanthropist

Bill Gates Sr, played a crucial role in the development of Microsoft, the world’s largest software company and Bill Gates turned to his father for advice on charitable foundation.

Bill Gates of The Gates Foundation, and Bill Gates, Sr. (File Phot/ Getty)

New Delhi: Bill Gates Sr, a known philanthropist and legal luminary, passed away on Monday at his beach home on Hood Canal, Washington. Bill Gates Sr, also known as William H. Gates Sr, is the father of IT czar and co-founder of Microsoft Corporation Bill Gates. According to the Bill Gates III’s family office, Bill Gates Sr was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Mellinda Gates, founder of the the world's largest private charitable organization,  also tweeted about the news and the bond she shared with him.

I am heartbroken about the passing of Bill Gates Sr. It is difficult to overstate what he meant to me, to our family, and to our foundation. Bill Sr. liked to say, in characteristic modesty, that the secret to his success was simply “showing up.”

— Melinda Gates (@melindagates) September 15, 2020

Here are some interesting facts about Bill Gates Sr. i) William H. Gates Sr was a lawyer by profession, who had been raised in the Great Depression era, and encouraged his son to donate his fortune to welfare services. ii) William Henry Gates II was born Nov. 30, 1925, in Bremerton, Washington, an hour’s away from Seattle. The senior lawyer has inherited work ethic from his father, who owned a furniture store in a town hit hard by the Great Depression. iii) Bill Gates Sr served in the US. Army during World War II in 1944 and went to Hokkaido, Japan, and Tokyo after the Japanese surrender, as per the news agency Bloomberg. iv) After coming back, he attended the University of Washington under the GI Bill and received a law degree in 1950. v) In 1951, he married Mary Maxwell Gates (1929–1994), whom he met at the University of Washington (UW), and they remained married until her death in 1994. They had three children: Kristianne, Bill, and Libby. vi) He built his law practice at the Seattle firm that became Preston Gates & Ellis LLP, then part of K&L Gates LLP. Among its clients was Microsoft, which Gates’s son founded with Allen in 1975. vii) When Bill Gates started giving donating the profits he made as co-founder of Microsoft Corp. he turned to his father to seek advice on the charitable foundation. viii) For their earliest philanthropic endeavors in the 1990s, the elder Gates worked from a basement office at home or, as a British newspaper reported, from the vinyl booth of a burger joint where he often ate lunch. ix) The William H. Gates Foundation, started in 1994 with an initial stock gift of $94 million, concentrated its giving on global health and community groups in the Pacific Northwest. The elder Gates scanned pleas from the serious to the whimsical. One man suggested funding a ballroom dancing television channel, he wrote in his 2009 memoir, “Showing Up for Life."