Bruce Bastian chaired WordPerfect and was later on the board of the Human Rights Campaign. Bastian has died at the age of 76. Courtesy of B.W. Bastian Foundation

Bruce Bastian, an Idaho farmer’s son who co-created WordPerfect, the once-ubiquitous word processor that a generation of computer users relied on to write and edit documents – and who later came out as gay and became an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights – died June 16 at his home in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 76.

The cause was complications from pulmonary fibrosis, said his son Rick Bastian.

Bastian never set out to become a tech entrepreneur, let alone a gay rights activist. Raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he grew up in the Magic Valley region of south-central Idaho, where he knew he was “different” and struggled to reconcile his sexuality with his faith. He remained closeted long after he started WordPerfect.

“I didn’t think there was another gay person on earth besides me,” he said in a 2018 interview with the LGBTQ+ organization Outwords, looking back on his childhood. “I thought I was totally weird.”

Since boyhood, he found a refuge in music, taking up the piano when he was 6 and later learning the clarinet and saxophone. After graduating from Brigham Young University in 1973 with a degree in music, he worked for a few years as the director of the school’s marching band, choreographing halftime shows and teaching students how to perform “The Cougar Song” at football games.

Eventually, Bastian recalled, the school decided it wanted someone with a PhD to lead the Cougar Marching Band. Bastian was fired. “Looking back,” he told Salt Lake City Weekly, “it was the best thing that happened to me.”

Bastian, who had been studying for a master’s degree in music, decided that he needed to pursue a more “serious” subject instead. He had already been working with computers, collaborating with BYU professor Alan C. Ashton on a program that helped him write and choreograph marching band formations, so he switched to a master’s program in computer science, with Ashton as his faculty adviser.

Soon after getting his degree in 1978, Ashton enlisted him for a new project: developing a word processor for government bureaucrats in Orem, Utah, who were looking for a digital alternative to the IBM Selectric typewriter. The software evolved into WordPerfect, which quickly supplanted another program, WordStar, as the dominant word processor of the 1980s and early ’90s.

Released on the commercial market in 1980, just as the personal computer was beginning to take off, the software drew praise for its clean display, ease of use and technical support, with customers encouraged to call a toll-free line if they needed help.

“While it isn’t as perfect as its name implies, WordPerfect is very impressive, a more than full-featured program with a few truly state-of-the-art goodies tucked into the package,” journalist Lindsy Van Gelder wrote in a 1983 review for PC Mag, praising features like find-and-replace, bold and underline display, and a macros system that allowed users to create timesaving mini-programs.

Bastian did much of the programming himself (“His computer code never had to be rewritten,” the Deseret News reported in 2003) and oversaw international operations while serving as the company’s chairman, with Ashton as president.

Their Orem-based business seemed to double in size every year – by 1990, they had more than 7,000 employees – and its growth made Bastian and Ashton two of the country’s richest men. Forbes magazine estimated their net worth at $475 million each.

But by the early 1990s, the business was beginning to struggle, with Bastian later acknowledging that he and WordPerfect were slow to react to the rise of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Word. By 1994, WordPerfect had less than 10% of the market share, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. WordPerfect was acquired by another Utah-based company, Novell, for $1.4 billion that year. (The software was later acquired by the Canadian company Corel, now known as Alludo, and has retained a small but faithful customer base.)

The sale was pivotal for Bastian, who had recently divorced his wife, Melanie Laycock.

Bruce Bastian with California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Courtesy of B.W. Bastian Foundation

The couple had raised four sons, while Bastian said he tried to follow the teachings of the Mormon Church. He experienced a gradual awakening during business trips to Europe, where he encountered gay bars for the first time and saw openly gay men walking hand-in-hand.

“I started to question myself,” he told Outwords, “and question whether I was as bad a person as the church was telling me I was.”

On a visit to Amsterdam, he locked eyes with a man named Walter. They struck up a conversation outside a McDonald’s, took a boat ride through the city’s canals and shared a kiss. Soon after he returned home, Bastian told his wife he was gay.

“I don’t think straight people can begin to imagine the inner turmoil and fear at this moment in a gay person’s life,” he told the Tribune in 2004. “All your dreams, plans, everything falls apart. The whole foundation of your life crumbles. You can stay the course or follow your heart and go where every human being dreams of going – to happiness ever after.”

Bastian and Laycock, who had married in 1976, continued to live together for a few years before separating. Bastian renounced his faith, deciding that he could not be gay and be a Mormon at the same time, and resigned from Novell’s board of directors in 1995 to focus on his philanthropic work.

For over two decades, he served as a board member of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group. Bastian co-chaired a successful campaign to defeat the Federal Marriage Amendment, which sought to legally define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. He also donated $1 million in the fight against California’s Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage, which passed but was later overturned in court.

Bastian said he wanted to counter an official statement by the Mormon Church that urged congregants to support the measure. He was later dismayed to see his donation offset by a $1 million gift on the other side of the ledger from Ashton, his longtime business partner, the grandson of a former president of the Mormon Church.

“It really hurt,” he told Outwords, adding that the donation “took a toll on our friendship.”

Bastian said his advocacy efforts were driven by memories of the self-loathing and confusion he experienced as a boy. “As a gay person, you grow up hating yourself. No matter how much you accomplish in life, you will be a failure because you are gay,” he told the Tribune. “I’m doing this for the kid in Idaho, growing up on a farm. I don’t want him to go through the [stuff] I went through.”

Bruce Wayne Bastian, the fifth of six children, was born in Twin Falls, Idaho, on March 23, 1948. His mother was a pianist who managed the family’s affairs; his father was a bass fiddler who played in dance bands, owned grocery stores and farmed.

Bastian took time off from college to serve as a Mormon missionary in Italy. 2010, President Barack Obama appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts.

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

Although he also had homes in London and Palm Springs, Bastian maintained strong ties to Utah, where he sought to promote the arts and LGBTQ+ rights in a traditionally conservative state. He donated 55 Steinway pianos to the University of Utah’s music program, supported Ballet West and the Utah Symphony, and was a longtime backer of Equality Utah and the Utah Pride Center.

“No individual has had a greater impact on the lives of LGBTQ Utahns than Bruce Bastian,” Troy Williams, executive director of Equality Utah, said in a statement. “Every success our community has achieved over the past three decades can be traced directly back to his love and support.”