William Gates, father of Microsoft cofounder, dies

William H. Gates II, a lawyer and philanthropist best known as the father of Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, has died at 94.

Gates died peacefully Monday at his beach home in Washington state from Alzheimer’s disease, the family announced Tuesday.

In an obituary, the family credited the patriarch with a “deep commitment to social and economic equity,” noting that he was responsible for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s first efforts to improve global health as well as his advocacy for progressive taxation, especially unsuccessful efforts to pass a state income tax on the wealthy in Washington.

“My dad’s wisdom, generosity, empathy, and humility had a huge influence on people around the world,” Bill Gates wrote in a tribute.

Born in 1925, Gates grew up in Bremerton, Wash., where his parents owned a furniture store. He joined the Army after his freshman year at the University of Washington and was en route to Japan when it surrendered in 1945.

He served a year in wartorn Tokyo before returning to the United States and resuming his education, his family said. After earning his law degree in 1950, he began working in private practice and as a parttime Bremerton city attorney.

He formed a Seattle law firm with two partners that is now known as K & L Gates, one of the world’s largest law firms. The firm was one of the first to work with the region’s technology industry.

Gates met his first wife, Mary Maxwell, at the University of Washington. They had two daughters and a son — Bill Gates — and remained married until her death in 1994. Two years later he married Mimi Gardner, then the director of the Seattle Art Museum, with whom he spent the last quartercentury of his life.

“When I was a kid, he wasn’t prescriptive or domineering, and yet he never let me coast along at things I was good at, and he always pushed me to try things I hated or didn’t think I could do,” swimming and soccer, for example, his son wrote in the tribute. “He was one of the hardestworking and most respected lawyers in Seattle, as well as a major civic leader in our region.”

That civic work included serving as a trustee of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Planned Parenthood and United Way. He also served as the president of the state and local bar associations and in the leadership of the American Bar Association, helping create diversity scholarships and promoting legal services for the poor.

Gates was a towering figure by reputation and in person — he stood 6foot7 — and his counsel was often sought. Former Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz has said that when he was struggling to raise the money to buy the sixstore coffee chain in 1987, Gates stepped in to rescue him from a rival buyer — not only by investing, but by personally taking Schultz to visit the rival, demanding as he loomed over the rival’s desk: “You are going to stand down and this kid is going to realize his dream. Do you understand me?”

Gates retired from law in 1998 and took on prominent roles with the Gates Foundation, helping to start its work in global health.

Because of the pandemic, the family said, a memorial service will be held later.