I first met Bill Gates in Las Vegas about 25 years ago.
He used to ridicule the Comdex booths and shows we would produce for our client Computer Associates. We would always have some dramatic theme like live boxing with real boxers in an actual boxing ring or a live fashion show with real models on a catwalk.
These mega shows would attract 400–500 prospects every hour on the hour. They really worked. But Bill wasn’t so sure – or maybe he was jealous?
He would always laugh at us and say, “Why do you have to do all that? At the Microsoft booth, whenever I want a crowd, all I have to do is put out a dish of water!”
A few years later, after he received a personal appeal from NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw, Bill and Melinda Gates gave Operation Smile a $1 million grant to help us start Smile Train.
I will always be grateful to them for that.
I greatly admire what Bill and Melinda have done with their Gates Foundation, which they launched a few years after they helped us launch Smile Train.
They have personally donated almost $40 billion and recruited their good friend – and Smile Train supporter – Warren Buffett who has given billions more.
I am pretty sure Bill and Melinda are the most philanthropic people in history of the world. And they’re not done yet. I have a feeling they may be only getting started.
Bill and Melinda have not only helped change the lives of tens of millions of people, they have inspired hundreds of millions of people.
Including me.
A few Bill Gates stories…
After that first $1 million gift from Bill and Melinda, I tried for many years to get grants from the Gates Foundation. But I never succeeded. Junior program officers told me that the problem of clefts “just wasn’t big enough for them” They said the problem was that “not enough people died” from clefts.
I was pretty shocked to hear this because the mission statement of the Gates Foundation is, “All lives have equal value.” It’s in gigantic type at the top of their website. But at the end of the day it was my fault – my presentation should have been more compelling.
I used to bump into Bill Gates a lot in the 90s at a huge computer tradeshow called Comdex. My client, computer Associates, was a large software company that partnered with Microsoft from time to time. So, we would have various meetings and Bill came to them. He was kind of nondescript back then. He was unassuming, very nerdy, skinny and this was before he was the richest man in the world.
One night at Comdex, my partner and I were at a dance club and we happened to sit down in the same seats at a bar that Bill Gates was just vacating. We said hello and goodbye to Bill as he left and ordered a drink.
Then we noticed there was a sport coat on the back of my chair. I immediately checked for wallet to see if it was Bill’s jacket so I could give it back to. All I found was a dry-cleaning ticket and a label that said the jacket was 100% polyester – and very inexpensive. Definitely not Bill Gates’ sport coat we concluded. 15 minutes later I get a tap on my shoulder and it was Bill. “Excuse me, forgot my jacket.” We had a good laugh over that.
A few years later I was invited to the very first dinner Bill and Melinda hosted at their brand new bazillion dollar house on the shore of Lake Washington near Seattle. Actually, I wasn’t invited by Bill and Melinda, but rather one of their closest friends – who was one of my best friends from Boston – had a close friend who had been invited by Bill and Melinda and she needed a date. That was me.
There were only about 70 people invited to this dinner and most of them were very close friends to Bill and Melinda. I was really honored to be included. Many of their friends seemed kind of nervous and eager to pay homage to Bill and Melinda.
I guess they wanted to make sure they got invited back. There was a lot of, “Oh, Melinda, you look so beautiful!” “These 500-year-old Douglas fir re-harvested wood floors are simply stunning!” “I love what you did with these windows!” “The stainless-steel roof is pure genius Bill! – do tell us how you thought of this!”
In many ways it felt like we had been invited to a castle and Bill and Melinda were royalty. Especially during dinner, Melinda stood in front of a huge video wall with a microphone and gave a short speech. I was struck by how old she looked and acted that night. At the time she was only 33 years old, but to me she looked like Eleanor Roosevelt giving a formal speech.
Anyhow, I had a better time than anyone because I was relaxed: I knew I was never coming back. So I could just enjoy it didn’t have to kowtow to anyone.
My favorite part of the evening was when Bill gave a few of us a tour. There were high definition television monitors throughout the house that displayed many of the world’s greatest paintings. There were speakers and intercoms everywhere. When the phone rang it would only bring at the phone nearest you. The swimming pool at an underwater sound system. This was the most technologically advanced house that had ever been built.
But when we came to a baby’s room – his children were very young then – and I noticed there was a Radio Shack baby monitor near the crib. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to embarrass Bill. But it was clear that all the Microsoft software and the latest technology wasn’t working all that great if they had to run out to RadioShack to buy a baby monitor.
The last time I saw Bill Gates was at a memorial service for Jeff Harbers, a very close friend of Bill Gates and the husband of one of my closest friends.
It was one of the saddest things I have ever seen. Jeff Harbers was the 67th person Bill Gates hired at Microsoft. His email was jeff@microsoft.com. Jeff was a brilliant developer and a big name at Microsoft. He also was a great husband, loving dad and a very nice guy.
Jeff led the team that developed Excel. He retired a very wealthy man when he was around 30 years old. He married the beautiful and brilliant Renee Watremez, a good friend of mine from Boston.
Over the years, Jeff and his wife Renée became very close to Bill and Melinda. They were one of only four couples who were invited to celebrate Bill’s 50th birthday on a cruise to Tahiti on Paul Allen’s 400-foot super yacht, Octopus along with Paul Allen and his girlfriend and Warren Buffett and his girlfriend.
Shortly after that, I was in Seattle and René showed me showed me some incredible photos from that trip. I let Jeff drive my car to dinner as he loved cars. For some reason, I had rented a muscle car. Jeff took advantage of the huge V-8 engine and did a major burnout, made a ton of noise and left a long streak of burning rubber right in front of his $8 million house in a very quiet, staid posh Seattle neighborhood.
We laughed all the way to the restaurant.
During dinner, Jeff just told me they just bought a new jet airplane called a Pilatus and invited me to fly with them the next day. Both he and Renee had their pilot licenses. That’s how they commuted from Seattle to their ranch in Montana into their ski house up at Whistler. I declined because I had to work.
We had a really fun dinner. Lots of stories, laughs, memories and wine. Before he went to bed that night, Jeff sent an email to Bill Gates saying he had finally figured out how to enjoy life.
A week later, Jeff and René flew to their ranch in Montana with their two young children, Brigitte and Luc. On Saturday, Jeff and a flight instructor were breaking in his new plane. They were practicing a maneuver called “engine failure after take-off.”
To do this they shut off the engine shortly after takeoff from a small airport in Big Timber, Montana. Then for some reason, they could not get the engine started again.
Without any power, the plane immediately lost altitude and began to nose dive, but just when it was about to hit the ground, they were able to start the engine. They leveled off the plane and increased power. But the right wing dipped ever so little and clipped a split rail fence causing the plane to crash and it immediately caught fire. Jeff and his instructor were both killed.
Jeff was 54 years old.
He had everything. A beautiful wife and two incredible children. A 10,000-acre ranch in Montana. A massive ski house in Whistler. A beautiful home in Seattle. And probably close to $100 million in the bank. He had just started to focus on philanthropy which was something he really loved. With his Microsoft fortune he had the means to do a lot of good.
He had everything. And then he had nothing.
I flew out to Montana for small service with just about 25 people including Bill Gates. It was very sad. One person who spoke said he was the person that got Jeff interested in becoming a pilot. He also added that Jeff was his 15th friend who had died while flying. That certainly didn’t make anyone feel any better.
It made me question why anyone would choose flying as a hobby. I thought of John Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn and her sister who all died when he piloted a small plane to Nantucket. I thought of my good friend Ted Saraceno who was flying with his dad, of former World War II pilot, when their landing gear failed to extend. They almost died. And I thought of all the small planes that seem to crash all the time. I read about one yesterday.
Life is too precious to risk it all on a small plane and an amateur pilot.
God bless Jeff Harbers and his family.