The Little Things You Never Hear About...

When a wealthy person makes a big grant to a hospital, college or some other worthy cause it usually attracts a lot of attention.

For every huge public gift made there are hundreds of quiet acts of kindness that are never noticed.

Here’s an example: Many think Steve Jobs or Bill Gates invented the computer. They didn’t. The first commercially successful personal computer was the Altair 8800 and it was created by a man named H. Edward Roberts. The computer was built by his company, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in Albuquerque, NM. I know because he was my cousin.

When the computer was built, it needed an operating system. This was resolved when Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and moved to Albuquerque along with his friend and business partner Paul Allen. 

It was from this that Microsoft was born. Gates and Allen launched a revolution with Microsoft that is still underway today. They moved to Seattle to eventual fame and fortune and my cousin sold MITS and relocated to Georgia where he eventually reallzed his lifetime dream of becoming a country doctor.

Forty years passed and there was not much contact, as they were all consumed in their own lives and business. Yet things changed in late 2010 when Edward became seriously ill and was hospitalized.

Immediately Allen and Gates got involved. Even though Allen was recovering from his own battle with cancer, they made calls, they wrote letters and they kept up with his progress closely. They went out of their way to let Edward know how much they appreciated what he had done for them and the high opinion they had of him.

They made plans for a special addition to be made to his house with all the high tech medical equipment required to maintain his care and for it to be fully staffed. They determined to spare no expense so that he would be able to be moved back to his house and be as comfortable as possible.

Unfortunately, he was hit with pneumonia which did more damage to his lungs and the possibility of ever moving back home again evaporated.

So, in his final days, Bill Gates personally traveled across the country and visited him in his room for 2 hours to pay his last respects and to provide some last encouragement and support. It wasn’t long before Edward was gone.

Gates and Allen had reached out to an old friend in his time of need. They didn’t do it for publicity. They did it because they cared. 

After Edward’s death they wrote touching articles detailing who exactly Edward was, reconfirming his place in history as the father of the personal computer and his impact on their lives.

These are the kinds of things you never hear about, but things of powerful impact nonetheless, and more revealing than anything else about their true natures.