The estate of Ric
Weiland, a high school classmate of Microsoft Corp.
founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen and one of the first five
people to work at the software giant, has left $65
million to gay rights and HIV/AIDS organizations.
The bequests were
announced Sunday by the Pride Foundation of Seattle,
where Weiland was a board member for several years. The
foundation called it the largest single bequest ever
given to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender
causes.
Gates and Allen
hired Weiland in 1975, the year they founded Microsoft.
He worked as a project leader for the Microsoft Works word
processing and spreadsheet software, and was a lead
programmer and developer for the company's BASIC and
COBOL systems, two of the first personal computing
interfaces. He left Microsoft in 1988.
Weiland donated
tens of millions to various organizations -- from gay
rights groups to environmental and education organizations
-- before he died in 2006. He committed suicide at age
53 after a long battle with depression, and survivors
include his partner, Mike Schaefer.
The $65 million
is among bequests totaling about $160 million -- the bulk
of Weiland's estate -- to various charities and Stanford
University, his undergraduate alma mater, according to
an estimate provided by the Pride Foundation.
In the latest
bequest, the Pride Foundation said Weiland's estate had
established a fund at the foundation that would give $46
million over the next eight years to 10 national gay
rights and HIV/AIDS groups, including Lambda Legal;
the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force; Parents, Families,
and Friends of Lesbians and Gays; the Gay and Lesbian
Alliance Against Defamation; and the American
Foundation for AIDS Research.
His estate also
bequeathed $19 million directly to the Pride Foundation
for scholarships and grants supporting gay, lesbian,
bisexual, and transgender people in the Pacific
Northwest. (Elizabeth M. Gillespie, AP)
