A conversation with William Gates Sr. and Bill Gates Jr.

A conversation with William Gates Sr. and Bill Gates Jr. about the book "Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime"

CHARLIE ROSE: Bill Gates and his father, William Gates Sr. are here.
Together, they have had a productive and lifelong collaboration. The elder
Gates is one of his son’s closest advisers and confidantes. He’s a former
lawyer and civic leader in Seattle. He now serves as co-chair of the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation. He’s also the author of a new book called
"Showing Up For Life." It relays the wisdom of a life spent practicing
law, serving the community, and helping raise three successful children.

Joining me now, father and son, Bill Gates Sr. and Bill Gates. I’m
pleased to have them both at this table. Welcome.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Glad to be here.

CHARLIE ROSE: Good to see you again.

BILL GATES JR.: Thank you.

CHARLIE ROSE: Your son knows this table.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes, I know he does. It’s new to me.

CHARLIE ROSE: Let me just start with this. I mean, this is a story
about a family. Only two of them are here. There is your late wife and
his mother, and two siblings.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: Why did you want to write this book at this time?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, it started off -- you know, I’m 83 years
old. I have had a lot of experiences and had a lot of things that I
believe in, and I was going to write a memoir for my grandchildren and
future generations, because I didn’t have anything like that from my
predecessors. And as we got working on and I had some help with it, people
said, well, we should -- this is better than -- this is more important
thing to get out than to just give to your family and friends. We should
see if it might attract a wider audience, and so that’s the phenomena that
occurred is that people encouraged me to do this.

CHARLIE ROSE: How many grandchildren now?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Eight at this point.

CHARLIE ROSE: My goodness. You said, Dad, the next time somebody
asks you if you’re the real Bill Gates, I hope you’ll say yes, I hope
you’ll tell them that you’re all the things the other one strives to be.
What is that? What is it the other one strives to be?

BILL GATES JR.: Well, my dad has set an example by what he does, you
know, whether it was at the university, speaking out on tough political
issues or going to war, or being a great lawyer. You know, he’s the one
who really got the foundation going, encouraged me to give early, got us
involved in some very key causes and helped us build what is now a strong
group of people that I -- I get to work with full-time. So my dad is
somebody I aspire to live up to what he’s done.

CHARLIE ROSE: To know you, and you and I have done interviews for a
while now, is to know of this insane curiosity. To read this book is to
know it started very early.

BILL GATES JR.: That’s right. A love of reading. A desire to ask
questions. And when parents made it fair game to talk to them about my
dad’s lawsuits or my mom’s charitable activities, you know, the questions,
were they doing things the right way. And so, we had great dinner-table
conversations and we had a comfort with talking to adults and knowing what
adults were up to.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: You have to understand that he had a point of view
about whether we were doing it the right way or not.

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE ROSE: What do you mean?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, he matured early.

CHARLIE ROSE: Now, this -- your bedroom was in the basement at some
point?

BILL GATES JR.: That’s right.

CHARLIE ROSE: And he was in the basement, and his mother called down
and said -- you pick up the story.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: And said -- well, we were all standing around, the
two girls and Mary and I were standing around upstairs, waiting to get into
the car and go somewhere. And said, “Bill, what are you doing?” He said,
“I’m thinking, Mother. Don’t you ever think?”

And mother and I...

CHARLIE ROSE: You don’t say that to your mother.

(LAUGHTER)

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, Mother and I looked at each other on that
question, and looked at each other rather carefully and said, “You know,
I’m not sure we do.”

CHARLIE ROSE: There is also this, which is alluded to here. There
was a point in which somebody in the family thought it might be a good idea
if he had some counseling, yes? And after the counseling, the counselor or
whatever he was -- psychologist, psychiatrist.

BILL GATES JR.: Yes, psychiatrist.

CHARLIE ROSE: Said to your parents, give up?

(LAUGHTER)

BILL GATES JR.: Well, yes. He actually told me that, you know, my
parents were on my side, and it was a pretty important insight, that, you
know, fighting with your parents over things is just -- you know, that’s
really not where things are. And that happened early. So as I grew older,
I -- my parents were helping me, and I focussing my energy on the world at
large.

CHARLIE ROSE: Let me just give a different interpretation, if I may,
even though I wasn’t there.

BILL GATES JR.: OK, good, good.

CHARLIE ROSE: It was that he said to your parents, stop arguing with
him. He’ll never stop arguing, and he’ll always win in the end. Does that
ring true to you?

BILL GATES JR.: Well, yes, he said that I had this unfair advantage,
that, you know, they really cared about me and, you know, didn’t really
prove anything. I shouldn’t think of myself as benefiting from winning
some argument. And he really brought me around.

CHARLIE ROSE: Oh, so you changed?

BILL GATES JR.: I did change. I was a little bit nicer.

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE ROSE: A little bit nicer.

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Right on.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do you remember that moment, when he was a little bit
nicer?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, I really do remember the advice from the
counselor, which was quite profound.

CHARLIE ROSE: What do you two disagree about?

BILL GATES JR.: I think my dad might give more sooner. You know, he
encouraged me to start the foundation while I was still working full-time
and, you know, for a few years I wasn’t sure that was right, but then with
him offering to help out, I absolutely did that, which I’m very glad I did.
And you know, he empathizes with the needs out there, and so it’s been a
very positive influence to push me to think with more humility and to do
more rapidly.

CHARLIE ROSE: It is often said that parents learn by watching -- that
children learn by watching their parents. But you say here, parents learn
by watching their children.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: I do say that, and I absolutely believe it. I
experienced it and I -- there are things about their mother and certainly
some things about me which I have learned from watching them. Our oldest
daughter is, for example, just meticulously confident about things. And
her...

CHARLIE ROSE: She’s the accountant?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Pardon me?

CHARLIE ROSE: Is she the accountant?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: She’s the accountant, yes, yes. And it all fits.

(LAUGHTER)

WILLIAM GATES SR.: And she’s a terrific example of, you know, you
think about that when you’re confronted with choices, and you say, well, if
Christy were here, I guess that’s what I’m going to do.

CHARLIE ROSE: His mother had a passion for community service. Served
on the board of regents of the University of Washington.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: And United Way. What was that about?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, to start with, it was genuine. I mean, she
believed in the value of community activity, and in addition to which,
which is just sort of tangential, she was also very good at it. So little
wonder that it was a very significant part -- significant part of her life.
It started from a very serious motivation about working on things that
could be made better.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do you remember when he first got interested in
computers?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: At this high school where Bill went to school,
there was this very, very beginning kind of computer, keyboard and a
teletype sort of a thing, but it was fascinating to him and some of his
classmates, and they spent hours fiddling with that thing and learning
about it, and ultimately, while he was still in high school, running
programs. He and those boys who he was in cohorts with actually did the
programming for the high school. They assigned teachers to classes and
kids to classes, and did the whole schedule for the high school, and in the
course of that, arranged which girls would be in the classes they would be
in, as a matter of fact -- as a matter of choice.

CHARLIE ROSE: There’s merit in that, isn’t there?

(CROSSTALK)

CHARLIE ROSE: Reflect on that for a moment. Because you -- Gladwell
writes about it. I think Paul Allen shared the passion with you at the
time and you two went off to do something important.

BILL GATES JR.: Yes, the school bought this device, and the teachers
found it a bit confusing, and lots of students clustered around. I was a
lot younger than most, but I had done well on some national math exams, so
people kind of challenged me to figure it out.

CHARLIE ROSE: Go ahead.

BILL GATES JR.: And after a few months, it winnowed down. Paul
Allen, who was two grades ahead of me, myself, and just a few others really
stuck with it, and we got basically addicted and kept learning more. So it
was a phenomenal opportunity. And then of course Paul later, you know, we
stick together, do a lot of things, and then he founds Microsoft with me.

CHARLIE ROSE: Addiction may be a mild term, might it not? I mean,
you once said to me you...

BILL GATES JR.: That’s true.

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE ROSE: It was maniacal. Is that the word?

BILL GATES JR.: No, if you’re engaged...

(CROSSTALK)

BILL GATES JR.: ... in something like that, you really learn a lot.
And we wanted to know how it worked and how to write software.

CHARLIE ROSE: You went to Harvard?

BILL GATES JR.: Briefly.

CHARLIE ROSE: Briefly.

BILL GATES JR.: Not long enough to get a degree, but it was nice
while I was there.

CHARLIE ROSE: Well, you promised your father you’ll eventually get
it, and in fact you did later. But let me just stay -- so you go to
Harvard, but you’re still maniacal about the computer and its
possibilities. Paul is in Albuquerque or somewhere by then, is he not?

BILL GATES JR.: Not yet.

CHARLIE ROSE: Not yet. OK, help me out.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Paul was actually in Massachusetts as well,
working for...

BILL GATES JR.: Honeywell.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: ... Honeywell?

BILL GATES JR.: Yeah.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: And actually, it was there that the article came
out in “Popular Mechanics” about this company in Albuquerque, which had a -
- it actually was a kit for a desktop computer. And that Paul came running
over, as I understand the story, to Bill’s dormitory and said here it is,
here it is, Bill, here we go.

CHARLIE ROSE: What did he mean?

BILL GATES JR.: Well, Paul had spotted this computer on a chip, the
microprocessor, and we’d been talking about that for several years. And he
had encouraged me, hey, let’s start a company, let’s start a company.
Well, I was under some pressure to go to school and do -- you know, be
semi-normal. So he came back to Boston to keep convincing me we should do
it.

So actually when that computer showed up, we were excited, but we also
thought, wow, this is happening without us, because Paul and I had seen
that the combination of these chips and software could do something
amazing, and that’s why we immediately wrote some software and called up
that company, and they became our first customer.

CHARLIE ROSE: And then you ended up with Microsoft and Intel, and
then you were off to the races.

BILL GATES JR.: That’s right. When we did the first Basic, there was
no looking back. Even though I was on leave there, I did not return.

CHARLIE ROSE: All right. Remember that period for me, because here’s
your son who’s gone off to Harvard, and you thought he would at least
finish four years.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: You and Mrs. Gates...

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Mary. Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: ... had high hopes for Bill.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: And he’s going to leave after one year.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, actually, it wasn’t quite that. He was
taking a semester off, so we weren’t confronting the ultimate demise of
college education there. We -- he was going to take a semester off and go
to Albuquerque and help Paul work there, and then he would go back. And in
fact, he did take a semester off and go back. The second time after he was
back for a semester, I have got to go back to Albuquerque. Now we started
to get...

CHARLIE ROSE: Nervous.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: ... a little bit concerned, and he never did go
back.

CHARLIE ROSE: And how was Mrs. Gates handling that?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: I would characterize her as being more concerned
than I. She just -- she had a stronger view in her mind of this is one of
my children. My children graduate from college. My children graduate from
college. My boy is not going to graduate from college? Oh, my word!

CHARLIE ROSE: She died of breast cancer and did not get to see this
movement in which you’re asked to come back, deliver the commencement
speech and get an honorary degree. As you go up to the podium, you look to
your father and say? What did you say to your father?

BILL GATES JR.: I said...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL GATES JR.: Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my
degree.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BILL GATES JR.: And that was a fun moment.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes, it was. It was.

CHARLIE ROSE: If you look at that as a fun moment, suggest to me in
this relationship and in this business career, moving into philanthropy,
that had been sort of the signal moments for you and for the family.

BILL GATES JR.: Well, as the business got bigger, I got advice from
my dad. Going public was a key milestone that we sat around the living
room and talked a lot about. And I...

CHARLIE ROSE: Now, were you the lawyer for the firm, for Microsoft?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: The law firm in which I was a partner -- actually,
the managing partner -- was the law firm that represented him in this
offering.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: I felt like it was wise for me to step back and
let others be the hands-on lawyers for the project.

CHARLIE ROSE: Just thought it was not a smart idea for father to be
representing son?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Precisely. Precisely.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK, so going public is one idea.

BILL GATES JR.: That was a big, big milestone. You know, the
contract with IBM, then the break with IBM, and getting to be quite large,
deciding to step down as CEO. These are all things that I had a chance to
talk to my dad about before I decided, and then just now, a little less
than a year ago, actually moving to the foundation full-time.

And during all that, my dad’s encouraging me, hey, what about the
giving? When -- can you start sooner and do more? And as early as about
2000, my dad volunteered, and so we started a new relationship, which was
he was looking at the letters and helping gather the team that became the
foundation.

CHARLIE ROSE: I want to come back to the foundation, but I want to
stay with the idea of this relationship within this family.

This has to do with Warren Buffett. Mrs. Gates and you are having a
dinner party in Seattle.