Bruce Bastian, a founding father of the WordPerfect Company, whose phrase processor was the favored device for writing through the early days of non-public computing — and who later, after popping out as homosexual, renounced his Mormon religion and funded L.G.B.T.Q. causes — died on June 16 at his dwelling in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 76.
Michael Marriott, the chief director of the B.W. Bastian Foundation, mentioned the trigger was issues of pulmonary fibrosis.
Mr. Bastian was ending graduate college at Brigham Younger College within the late Nineteen Seventies when he based the corporate that grew to become WordPerfect with Alan C. Ashton, his pc science professor and a grandson of David O. McKay, the influential former president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Within the Eighties and early ’90s, Mr. Bastian and Mr. Ashton had been on the forefront of creating computer systems extra productive for each day duties. Years later, they grew to become adversaries within the authorized battle over homosexual marriage.
Extremely customizable, with a free buyer help line, WordPerfect emerged from a crowded market of upstart phrase processors because the go-to selection of recent private pc customers. (Amongst its followers was Philip Roth, who used it till he retired in 2012, lengthy after this system was supplanted in recognition by Microsoft Phrase.)
“WordPerfect had a fame for being very user-friendly,” Matthew Kirschenbaum, an English professor on the College of Maryland and the creator of “Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing” (2016), mentioned in an interview. “It was clear and fashionable. Many of the display screen was given over to the doc you had been writing, versus plenty of menus and the equipment of the software program.”
Mr. Bastian wrote a lot of the software program code. Mr. Ashton ran the enterprise aspect. By 1991, the corporate managed 50 p.c of the phrase processing market and was producing greater than $500 million in gross sales. It employed greater than 4,000 individuals, most of them on the firm’s headquarters in Orem, Utah — a whole lot of miles from Silicon Valley.
“In a world during which Silicon Valley corporations thrive, WordPerfect Corp. is a little bit of an oddball,” Private Computing journal wrote in a 1988 cowl article in regards to the firm. “At 4,000 ft above sea degree, Utah’s Nice Basin isn’t precisely high-tech headquarters. The air in Orem is dry in December, the snow falling on the Wasatch Entrance east of Salt Lake Metropolis is the powdery fluff knowledgeable skiers crave.”
The corporate’s location wasn’t the one oddity.
“There’s one other factor that distinguishes this high-tech firm from most others,” the journal famous. “Like two-thirds of Utah’s inhabitants, most WordPerfect workers are Mormons.”
That included each its founders — one among whom was harboring a secret that tormented him.
In 1976, Mr. Bastian married his finest good friend, Melanie Laycock. They ultimately had 4 sons. However all alongside, he later instructed interviewers, Mr. Bastian knew he was homosexual.
Someday within the late Eighties, whereas on a enterprise journey in Amsterdam, he kissed one other man.
“Once I obtained again to Utah, I used to be a multitude,” Mr. Bastian mentioned in an interview with Outwords, a company that information oral histories in regards to the L.G.B.T.Q. motion. “It was simply so transformational and so troublesome. I stroll within the door and see my little boys and I simply thought: ‘Uh, jeez. What am I going to do?’”
He instructed his spouse just a few days later.
“We tried to make it work,” he instructed Outwords. “I attempted to be homosexual and be a Mormon on the identical time. That’s unattainable.”
Mr. Bastian got here out publicly just a few years later and withdrew his identify from the information of the Mormon Church. He obtained nameless emails from individuals expressing their disgust about his sexuality. Nonetheless, he felt liberated.
“It was such a reduction to really not should lie anymore,” he told the podcast “Mormon Tales.”
However there was bother brewing in WordPerfect’s enterprise.
The corporate’s software program dominated the marketplace for computer systems operating on the MS-DOS working system, but it surely was slow to roll out a model for the rising Microsoft Home windows platform. Microsoft additionally bundled Phrase into its productiveness suite of applications, Microsoft Workplace, which rapidly ate into WordPerfect’s market share.
In 1994, Mr. Bastian and Mr. Ashton sold their privately held firm to Novell for $1.4 billion. Novell later bought the software program to Corel, which is now generally known as Alludo. WordPerfect nonetheless has a loyal following within the authorized world.
Mr. Bastian left the corporate after the announcement of the sale to Novell. By way of his basis, he grew to become a significant philanthropist, funding arts and cultural applications all through Utah. He additionally supported L.G.B.T.Q. causes and joined the board of administrators of the Human Rights Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group.
In 2008, the Mormon Church urged its members to financially help the passage of Proposition 8, a poll measure in California outlawing same-sex marriage. Mr. Ashton contributed $1 million.
“I needed to ensure the long run is nice for my kids and grandchildren,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune. “That’s why I gave.”
Mr. Bastian contributed $1 million to opposition efforts.
The episode, he mentioned, left him feeling betrayed by Mr. Ashton. It was, he instructed The Tribune, “ actually painful for me.”
Bruce Wayne Bastian was born on March 23, 1948, in Twin Falls, Idaho. His father, Arlon, owned a grocery retailer and a farm and was additionally a musician. His mom, Una (Davis) Bastian, managed the family.
He majored in music schooling at Brigham Younger College, graduating in 1975. He was the director of the college’s marching band and, with Mr. Ashton, wrote a program that helped choreograph performances. He obtained his grasp’s in pc science in 1978.
In 1985, The Orem-Geneva Instances took observe of the native firm’s success.
“It’s exhausting to consider,” the newspaper wrote, “that an organization with such humble beginnings might grow to be one of many main opponents (if not the main) within the microcomputer phrase processing business.”
Mr. Bastian and his spouse divorced in 1993. She died in 2016.
He married Clint Ford in 2018.
Mr. Ford survives him, as do his sons, Rick, Darren, Jeff and Robert; two sisters, Camille Cox and Marietta Peterson; a brother, Reese Bastian; and 14 grandchildren.
For Mr. Bastian, popping out was each terrifying and hopeful.
“I don’t assume straight individuals can start to think about the internal turmoil and worry at this second in a homosexual particular person’s life,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune. “All of your goals, plans, all the things falls aside. The entire basis of your life crumbles. You may keep the course or observe your coronary heart and go to the place each human being goals of going — to happiness ever after.”