Bruce Bastian, the founder of WordPerfect Corporation whose word processor was the preferred tool for writing in the early days of personal computing — and who later acknowledged being gay, renounced his Mormon religion and funded LGBTQ causes — died June 16 at his home in Palm Springs, California. He was 76.
Michael Marriott, Executive Director, BW Bastian FoundationHe said the cause was complications of pulmonary fibrosis.
While Mr. Bastian was completing his undergraduate studies at Brigham Young University in the late 1970s, he founded the company that would become WordPerfect with Alan C. Ashton, his computer science professor and his grandson. David O. McKayInfluential former president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In the 1980s and early '90s, Mr. Bastian and Mr. Ashton were at the forefront of making computers more productive for everyday tasks. Years later, they became adversaries in the legal battle over gay marriage.
Highly customizable, with a free customer support line, WordPerfect emerged from a crowded market of new word processors as the first choice of new personal computer users. (Its fans included Philip Roth(who used it until his retirement in 2012, long since replaced by Microsoft Word in popularity.)
“WordPerfect had a reputation for being very user-friendly,” Matthew KirschenbaumProfessor of English at the University of Maryland and author of “Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing” (2016), said in an interview. “It was clean and modern. The majority of the screen was given over to the document you were writing, as opposed to lots of menus and mechanisms of software.”
Mr. Bastian wrote most of the software code. Mr. Ashton handled the business side of things. By 1991, the company controlled 50 percent of the word processing market and was generating sales of more than $500 million. It employed more than 4,000 people, most of them at the company's headquarters in Orem, Utah — hundreds of miles from Silicon Valley.
“In a world where Silicon Valley companies thrive, WordPerfect Corp. is a bit of an oddity,” Personal Computing magazine wrote in a cover article about the company in 1988. “At 4,000 feet above sea level, Utah's Great Basin isn't exactly a high-tech headquarters. While the air in Orem is dry in December, the snow that falls on the Wasatch Front east of Salt Lake City is the kind of powder that expert skiers crave.”
The company's location wasn't the only oddity.
“There's one more thing that sets this high-tech company apart,” the magazine wrote. “Like two-thirds of Utah's population, most of WordPerfect's employees are Mormon.”
This included both of its founders – one of whom had a secret that was troubling him.
In 1976, Mr. Bastian married his best friend, Melanie Laycock. They had four sons. But, he later told interviewers, Mr. Bastian knew he was gay.
In the late 1980s, during a business trip in Amsterdam, he kissed another man.
“When I got back to Utah I was very upset,” Mr. Bastian said. In an interview with Outwardsan organization that records oral histories about the LGBTQ movement. “It was very transformative and very difficult. I walked in the door and saw my little boys and I thought: 'Uh, jeez. What am I going to do?'”
After a few days he told this to his wife.
“We tried to make it work. I tried to be gay and Mormon at the same time. It's impossible,” he told Outwords.
A few years later Mr. Bastian came out publicly and withdrew his name from Mormon church records. He received anonymous emails from people expressing their disgust about his sexuality. Still, he felt liberated.
“It's a great relief for me that I don't have to lie anymore,” he said. told Podcast “Mormon Stories.”
But WordPerfect's business was having trouble.
The company's software dominated the market for computers running on the MS-DOS operating system, but it Slow start A version for the emerging Microsoft Windows platform. Microsoft also included Word in its suite of productivity programs, Microsoft Office, which quickly ate away at WordPerfect's market share.
In 1994, Mr. Bastian and Mr. Ashton sold He sold his privately held company to Novell for $1.4 billion. Novell later sold the software to Corel, now known as Eludo. word perfect There are still people loyal to him in the legal world.
Mr. Bastian left the company after the sale to Novell was announced. Through his foundation, he became a major philanthropist, funding arts and cultural programs throughout Utah. He also supported LGBTQ causes and got included in Board of Directors of Human Rights CampaignAn LGBTQ advocacy group.
In 2008, the Mormon Church urged its members To financially aid the passage of Proposition 8, a ballot measure outlawing gay marriage in California. Mr. Ashton contributed $1 million.
“I wanted to make sure my children and grandchildren had a good future,” he said. told Salt Lake Tribune: “That's why I gave.”
Mr. Bastian contributed $1 million to the opposition effort.
She said the incident left her feeling betrayed by Mr Ashton. “It was very painful for me,” she told The Tribune.
Bruce Wayne Bastian was born on March 23, 1948, in Twin Falls, Idaho. His father, Arlon, owned a grocery store and a farm and was also a musician. His mother, Una (Davis) Bastian, managed the household.
He earned a bachelor's degree in music education from Brigham Young University, graduating in 1975. He was the director of the university's marching band and, with Mr. Ashton, wrote a program that helped choreograph performances. He received a master's degree in computer science in 1978.
In 1985, the Orem-Geneva Times noted the success of the local company.
The paper wrote, “It is hard to believe that a company with such humble beginnings could become one of the major competitors (if not the dominant one) in the microcomputer word processing industry.”
Mr. Bastian and his wife divorced in 1993. She died in 2016.
In 2018, she married Clint Ford.
Surviving are Mr. Ford, his sons Rick, Darren, Jeff and Robert, two sisters Camille Cox and Marietta Peterson, a brother Reese Bastian and 14 grandchildren.
For Mr. Bastian, coming out was both frightening and hopeful.
He said, “I don't think straight people can imagine the inner turmoil and fear in a gay person's life at the moment.” told Salt Lake Tribune. “All your dreams, plans, everything falls apart. The whole foundation of your life collapses. You can stay on your path or follow your heart and go where every human being dreams of going — to be happily ever after.”
