Bruce Bastian, WordPerfect co-founder and LGBTQ+ champion, dies at 76

The trigger was problems from pulmonary fibrosis, stated his son Rick Bastian.

Mr. Bastian by no means got down to change into a tech entrepreneur, not to mention a homosexual rights activist. Raised within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he grew up within the Magic Valley area of south-central Idaho, the place he knew he was “totally different” and struggled to reconcile his sexuality along with his religion. He remained closeted lengthy after he began WordPerfect.

“I didn’t suppose there was one other homosexual individual on earth in addition to me,” he stated in a 2018 interview with the LGBTQ+ group Outwords, trying again on his childhood. “I believed I used to be completely bizarre.”

Since boyhood, he discovered a refuge in music, taking over the piano when he was 6 and later studying the clarinet and saxophone. After graduating from Brigham Younger College in 1973 with a level in music, he labored for a number of years because the director of the varsity’s marching band, choreographing halftime reveals and educating college students find out how to carry out “The Cougar Tune” at soccer video games.

Finally, Mr. Bastian recalled, the varsity determined it wished somebody with a PhD to guide the Cougar Marching Band. Mr. Bastian was fired. “Wanting again,” he instructed Salt Lake Metropolis Weekly, “it was one of the best factor that occurred to me.”

Mr. Bastian, who had been finding out for a grasp’s diploma in music, determined that he wanted to pursue a extra “severe” topic as an alternative. He had already been working with computer systems, collaborating with BYU professor Alan C. Ashton on a program that helped him write and choreograph marching band formations, so he switched to a grasp’s program in pc science, with Ashton as his school adviser.

Quickly after he bought his diploma in 1978, Ashton enlisted him for a brand new challenge: growing a phrase processor for presidency bureaucrats within the metropolis of Orem, Utah, who had been in search of a digital various to the IBM Selectric typewriter. The software program advanced into WordPerfect, which shortly supplanted one other program, WordStar, because the dominant phrase processor of the Eighties and early ’90s.

Launched on the industrial market in 1980, simply as the non-public pc was starting to take off, the software program drew reward for its clear show, ease of use and technical help, with clients inspired to name a toll-free line in the event that they wanted assist.

“Whereas it isn’t as excellent as its identify implies, WordPerfect could be very spectacular, a greater than full-featured program with a number of really state-of-the-art goodies tucked into the package deal,” journalist Lindsy Van Gelder wrote in a 1983 evaluation for PC Magazine, praising options like find-and-replace, daring and underline show, and a macros system that allowed customers to create timesaving mini-programs.

Mr. Bastian did a lot of the programming himself (“His pc code by no means needed to be rewritten,” the Deseret Information reported in 2003) and oversaw worldwide operations whereas serving as the corporate’s chairman, with Ashton as president.

Their Orem-based enterprise appeared to double in dimension yearly — by 1990, that they had greater than 7,000 workers — and its progress made Mr. Bastian and Ashton two of the nation’s richest males, with Forbes journal estimating their internet value at $475 million every.

However by the early Nineties, the enterprise was starting to wrestle, with Mr. Bastian later acknowledging that he and WordPerfect had been gradual to react to the rise of Microsoft Home windows and Microsoft Phrase. By 1994, WordPerfect had lower than 10 p.c of the market share, in response to the Salt Lake Tribune. WordPerfect was acquired that 12 months by one other Utah-based firm, Novell, for $1.4 billion. (The software program was later acquired by the Canadian firm Corel, now referred to as Alludo, and has retained a small however trustworthy buyer base.)

The sale got here at a pivotal second for Mr. Bastian, who had not too long ago divorced his spouse, Melanie Laycock.

The couple had raised 4 sons whereas Mr. Bastian stated he tried to comply with the teachings of the Mormon Church. He skilled a gradual awakening throughout enterprise journeys to Europe, the place he encountered homosexual bars for the primary time and noticed brazenly homosexual males strolling hand-in-hand.

“I began to query myself,” he instructed Outwords, “and query whether or not I used to be as unhealthy an individual because the church was telling me I used to be.”

On a go to to Amsterdam, he locked eyes with a person named Walter. They struck up a dialog exterior a McDonald’s, took a ship trip via town’s canals and shared a kiss. Quickly after he returned residence, Mr. Bastian instructed his spouse he was homosexual.

“I don’t suppose straight folks can start to think about the interior turmoil and worry at this second in a homosexual individual’s life,” he instructed the Tribune in 2004. “All of your goals, plans, every part falls aside. The entire basis of your life crumbles. You may keep the course or comply with your coronary heart and go to the place each human being goals of going — to happiness ever after.”

Mr. Bastian and Laycock, who had married in 1976, continued to dwell collectively for a number of years earlier than separating. Mr. Bastian renounced his religion, deciding that he couldn’t be homosexual and be a Mormon on the identical time, and resigned from Novell’s board of administrators in 1995 to give attention to his philanthropic work.

For greater than 20 years, he served as a board member of the Human Rights Marketing campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group. Mr. Bastian co-chaired a profitable marketing campaign to defeat the Federal Marriage Modification, which sought to legally outline marriage as a union between a person and a lady. He additionally donated $1 million within the combat towards California’s Proposition 8, a 2008 poll measure to ban same-sex marriage, which handed however was later overturned in court docket.

Mr. Bastian stated he wished to counter an official assertion by the Mormon Church that urged congregants to help the measure. He was later dismayed to see his donation offset by a $1 million present on the opposite aspect of the ledger from Ashton, his longtime enterprise associate, the grandson of a former president of the Mormon Church.

“It actually damage,” he instructed Outwords, including that the donation “took a toll on our friendship.”

Mr. Bastian stated his advocacy efforts had been pushed by recollections of the self-loathing and confusion he skilled as a boy. “As a homosexual individual, you develop up hating your self. Regardless of how a lot you accomplish in life, you’ll be a failure since you are homosexual,” he instructed the Tribune. “I’m doing this for the child in Idaho, rising up on a farm. I don’t need him to undergo the [stuff] I went via.”

The fifth of six kids, Bruce Wayne Bastian was born in Twin Falls, Idaho, on March 23, 1948. His mom was a pianist and managed the household’s affairs; his father was a bass fiddler who performed in dance bands, owned grocery shops and farmed.

Mr. Bastian took day off from school to function a Mormon missionary in Italy. In 2010, President Barack Obama appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts.

Survivors embrace his husband of six years, Clint Ford; 4 sons, Rick, Darren, Jeff and Robert Bastian; two sisters; a brother; and 14 grandchildren.

Though he additionally had properties in London and Palm Springs, Mr. Bastian maintained sturdy ties to Utah, the place he sought to advertise the humanities and LGBTQ+ rights in a historically conservative state. He donated 55 Steinway pianos to the College of Utah’s music program, supported Ballet West and the Utah Symphony, and was a longtime backer of Equality Utah and the Utah Satisfaction Middle.

“No particular person has had a larger affect on the lives of LGBTQ Utahns than Bruce Bastian,” Troy Williams, govt director of Equality Utah, stated in an announcement. “Each success our group has achieved over the previous three many years could be traced instantly again to his love and help.”