Overdrive, page 14
“At the time that Melinda and young Bill decided to get married, she expressed the fact that it was very important to her personally that the wedding be a Catholic ceremony,” said a close friend of the Gates family. “So Melinda talked with Mary Gates and told her she wanted a Catholic wedding. Mary told her if that’s what she wanted, then she needed to talk with Father Sullivan.”
With his wavy white hair and imposing physique, Father William Sullivan had become one of the better-known figures in the Seattle community since he arrived in 1970 to become president of Seattle University, an institution steeped in the Jesuit tradition, but one that had been struggling financially. Since Sullivan took the reins, it has operated in the black. He and Mary Gates became close friends while working together for the United Way and various civic projects. Mary loved Sullivan’s spirit of adventure. In 1990, Sullivan had participated in the International Peace Climb of Mount Everest, and celebrated mass at 20,000 feet.
At Mary’s suggestion, French contacted Sullivan, and the two met for breakfast to visit and talk about her wedding plans. French later wrote a note to Sullivan saying she and Gates would be very pleased if he could officiate at their wedding.
By this time, they had decided to have their wedding in Hawaii, on the island of Lanai. Once known as the “Pineapple Island” and more recently as the “Private Island,” Lanai is as beautiful as it is secluded, which is why it has become a favorite of A-list celebrities such as Richard Gere, Gene Hackman, Kevin Costner, and Oprah Winfrey. At the island’s two resorts, Hollywood celebrities can escape the usual tourist crowd and autograph seekers who hound them at other luxury Hawaiian resorts. Here, the twentieth century is left behind. There are no hula dancers or high-rise hotels with revolving restaurants; instead, flat pineapple fields stretch to the horizon, mountains are wrapped in mist, and cliffs plunge into the dark blue waters of the Pacific.
Only 18 miles long and 13 miles wide, Lanai is the sixth largest island in the Hawaiian chain. Reachable by air or via an hour-long boat ride from the old whaling town of Lahaina on the leeward side of Maui, it has only two paved roads, traversing fewer than 30 miles. Most of the island’s 3,000 residents live in Lanai City, a village of 1920s-era plantation homes and Hawaiian bungalows with washboardlike tin roofs. Boston businessman James Dole bought the island from missionaries for $1.1 million in 1922, imported workers from the Philippines, and turned it into the world’s largest pineapple plantation, Until the late 1980s, the public was not welcome. Then David Murdock, chairman and largest shareholder of Dole Food Inc., took control of parent company Castle & Cook. Murdock, a billionaire who often roamed the island in a white suit and Panama hat, decided it was cheaper to grow pineapples overseas, so he yanked out the 17,000 acres of pineapple plants and turned to tourism.
Until 1990, the only place to stay on the island was a rustic 10-room hotel built by Dole in 1923 to house visitors and to provide executives of his pineapple plantations with entertainment. But shortly after Murdock took control of Castle & Cook and renamed it Dole Food, the company spent $400 million to build two world-class hotels. The Lodge at Koele, erected on a hillside in the misty foothills above Lanai City, opened in 1990. The next year, the Manele Bay Hotel opened on a bluff overlooking Hulopoe Bay and the island’s best beach. Its 250 rooms, which rent for $250 to $2,000 a day, are nestled in a series of low buildings among the gardens and pools. At the hotel’s private beach with its talcum-white sands, guests can swim in a protected marine sanctuary with dolphins and parrot fish. Not long before the Gates wedding, shooting had wrapped at the Manele Bay Hotel for the movie Exit to Eden, which starred Dan Ackroyd and Rosie O’Donnell.
Gates and French wanted their wedding ceremony outdoors, on the golf course at the Manele Bay Hotel. The championship 18-hole course designed by Jack Nicklaus was scheduled to open Christmas Day, a week before the nuptials at sunset on January 1, 1994. The actual ceremony would take place on the green grass of the tee box for the par 3 twelfth hole, the so-called signature hole of the course because of its stunning beauty and dramatic location. The tee box is on a spit that juts out adjacent to cliffs that plunge more than 200 feet into the Pacific. Murdock had personally assured Gates that since 99 percent of the island was privately owned, the press could be kept away if they found out. French, who had voiced concerns to friends that if the media found out they would ruin the wedding, was determined not to let that happen. She was all too aware that helicopters hired by paparazzi had flown so low over Madonna and Sean Penn’s wedding that the bride and groom could not hear each other. And when Elizabeth Taylor remarried, a reporter for a tabloid paper parachuted into the ceremony. Hoping to prevent details about the wedding from leaking out, French insisted that anyone hired to work on the wedding sign a nondisclosure agreement.
In addition, to mislead the media, misinformation was released. When Gates and French signed up with the Seattle Bon Marche bridal registry, they listed the wedding day as February 14, Valentine’s Day. (Among gift requests were upper-middle- class staples such as Waterford crystal—12 highball glasses at $50 a pop; Towle sterling flatware, El Grande pattern, at $232 for a four-piece place setting; and Lenox Westchester china, at $400 for a five-piece setting.)
But accurate word about the wedding did leak out. In late November, Windows Watcher, a trade newsletter that keeps close tabs on Microsoft, reported that the wedding was on schedule for sometime in January on the island of Lanai. On December 29, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the morning paper, confirmed details about the wedding, including the January 1 date. When a reporter phoned Microsoft for comment, Microsoft’s public relations czar Marty Taucher called the paper’s publisher and requested on behalf of the Gates family that the story not run. In exchange, Taucher offered the paper an exclusive picture of the wedding that was to be taken by a photographer hired for the occasion. Microsoft had planned to release only one photograph of the event to the media, but would give the paper a second photograph, he explained. The paper refused to withdraw, but it did agree to report that the wedding was to take place “somewhere in Hawaii,” and not mention
Lanai or the Mancie Hay Hotel golf course. The banner headline story ran the next morning, December 30. It had also been sent to the New York Times and Associated Press wire services before publication, and by the time the paper hit the streets that morning, other papers, as well as radio and television, had already learned the location of the ceremony.
Gates and French, along with family members, had been on Lanai for a week by the time the media learned the wedding date and location. Months in advance, Gates had booked both families into rooms at the Lodge and at the Manele Bay Hotel. More than 130 people had been invited to the wedding and had taken rooms at the Manele Bay Hotel and the Lodge. For security reasons, Gates also rented most of the rest of the rooms at both hotels even though they were not needed to accommodate his party. As a result, several Hollywood stars who had planned to vacation on Lanai over Christmas were unable to do so.
Gates was footing the entire wedding bill, which was expected to cost well over a million dollars. At the Manele Bay Hotel, family members and Gates and French occupied all but one of the top floor’s 13 rooms, which were known as the Butler Suites because a butler saw to the needs of anyone staying on the floor. The rooms cost $1,300 per night. The one suite not used by the wedding party was occupied by hotel owner Murdock.
Wedding guests had been told to travel to Honolulu on their own; from there they would be flown to Lanai on a Boeing 737 chartered by Gates. Several arrived at the Lanai airport in their private jets. The “Friends of Bill” guest list read like a who’s who in the Forbes annual listing of the richest people in America. In addition to Gates, there were four other billionaires in attendance: best man Steve Ballmer, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, cellular phone magnate Craig McCaw, and investor Warren Buffett. Other guests included Ann Winblad and Katharine Graham, owner and former publisher of the Washington Post, who was a close friend of both Bulfett and Gates and his family.
Mary Gates had made the trip, too, despite her illness. After encouraging her son for years to marry, she was not going to miss his wedding.
“Mary was absolutely remarkable,” said a family friend at the wedding. “She was very, very sick before the wedding, but I think it’s one of those clear examples of a woman rallying, just by her own force of character. To see her at that wedding ... if you didn’t know that she was sick, I don’t think you would have picked it up. She was right there. She was full of spark, just like the Mary Gates of old.”
On Tuesday, December 28, Gates and French had walked into a small office in Lanai City and paid $16 for a marriage license. Marian Honda, the state marriage license agent, had closed the office at the couple’s request while they filled out the forms. Honda had been contacted two months earlier by a Microsoft representative and told about the wedding. She also was asked not to say anything to anyone.
With New Year’s Day falling on a Saturday, most of the wedding guests had arrived midweek. Gates had spared no expense to fill their time on the island with fun, parties, and small gifts.
“Throughout the course of our stay on the island,” one guest said, “there was a constant stream of little gifts and packages that appeared in each of our rooms. So, when we went back to our hotel room, maybe there was a beautiful basket of fruit; and then another time, there was a little gift or memento of the wedding.”
The morning of the day before the wedding, some of the guests played in a golf tournament at the Koele Lodge on an 18-hole course designed by Greg Norman. Gates and his father played together. Afterward, all the men had a luncheon for the groom at the Lodge, while the women had their own luncheon for the bride at the Manele Bay Hotel. A raucous luau complete with a fireworks show was held that night, New Year’s Eve, on the private beach below the hotel, where Gates surprised the love of his life with a performance by Willie Nelson, her favorite singer. Nelson had been flown in that day from Honolulu and had been kept out of sight in the hotel until it was time to make his entrance, which came when Gates got up during the luau and announced to his guests, “You know, I want to do something special for Melinda and I thought about singing for her, but you all know I can’t sing a note. So I’ve asked a friend of ours to come and sing.”
On cue, Nelson walked out from under some nearby trees. This was one secret that had not gotten out. French was overwhelmed as Nelson began singing with a backup band, and everyone, including Gates and French, danced in the sand.
“He just kept going and going,” said one guest about Nelson, who, like French, hails from Texas. “People just kept calling out songs for him to sing. The biggest laugh of the whole evening came when Willie sang the song with the line, I’ve got the money, honey, if you got the time.’ That was the humorous high point of the night.”
Hundreds of people who live in Lanai City had driven down to the beach that night for the 10:00 p.m. fireworks show, but they were kept more than 100 yards away by Microsoft and hotel security. News of the wedding had spread around the island several weeks earlier. Frustrated reporters and photographers who had begun arriving on the island Thursday had all but disappeared under threat of arrest. Reporters caught anywhere near the hotel had received trespass warnings that stated: “You are hereby notified that your presence and/or patronage is no longer desired on property owned and operated by Lanai Company, including ... all lands owned by Castle & Cook. This serves as a notice that you are not to return.” Media representatives were told they would be arrested if found on private property again. Since about 99 percent of the island is privately owned, there was little point in staying.
A few reporters never made it inland; they were met by security at the Lanai airport and sent packing on the same plane on which they arrived. Only one reporter was actually arrested. He was incarcerated in the Lanai City jail, and released only after he agreed to leave the island. He subsequently sued Gates and Murdock for false arrest, and won. One enterprising freelance photographer managed to reach the golf course by walking through a low-lying scrub forest, where he hid for awhile in one of the large white tents that had been set up for the wedding. He was eventually discovered by security, who escorted him down to the Manele Bay harbor, where he boarded a boat off the island. Nevertheless, some pictures he shot of the wedding site, along with his personal account of his adventures in trying to cover the event, were published by the computer industry trade magazine PC Week.
New Year’s Day dawned with a magnificent sunrise. Later in the morning, guests were treated to a tour and champagne brunch aboard Paul Allen’s 154-foot custom yacht, the Charade, which had sailed over for the wedding and was anchored in the Manele Bay harbor, not far from one of the island’s landmarks, “Sweetheart Rock,” a strikingly beautiful rock formation just off shore.
Even as guests were being transported by motorized launch back and forth to the yacht, workers were putting the finishing touches to the wedding site. Potted plants and palm trees decorated the tee box, where 130 white folding chairs had been arranged facing the ocean, in rows separated by an aisle. By early afternoon, security around the hotel and golf course intensified as the time for the ceremony neared. The golf course was closed, and security officers patrolled the fairways and positioned themselves on hills behind the course. At 4:00 p.m., a red security helicopter took off from the golf course and swooped repeatedly over the hotel beach about a mile away. It then swept low over the golf course and the hills beyond, on the lookout for any intruders.
The first of the wedding guests arrived at the tee box at 5:00 P.M. in a procession of golf carts driven by blue-shirted hotel staff. After they were dropped off, the carts returned to the hotel to pick up other guests. French was the last to be driven out in one of the vehicles, her wedding dress blowing behind her in the wind. Her simple gown, made from Italian silk decorated with pearls and designed by a bridal shop in Seattle, had cost about $10,000, far less than what many society brides spend on their wedding dresses.
The ceremony began with Gates and French speaking to each other “from the heart” in front of Father Sullivan, who wore a white alb and stole.
“It was a particularly beautiful moment,” recalled a close friend of the couple. “When we were planning the wedding, Bill and Melinda expressed the desire that before they pronounced their formal marriage vows, they take just a moment, each of them in turn, to express to the other person how very, very much the other meant to them and how getting to know them and falling in love had really changed their whole lives. So, they each took just a couple of minutes, and in very personal words, and talking directly to each other, expressed their love and appreciation and gratitude. That was a little aspect of the wedding that is not a conventional thing, but that was really done very, very beautifully.”
There were several scripture readings, including one by French’s aunt. When the ceremony ended and Gates and his bride kissed, the guests broke into loud applause.
As promised, Microsoft released one official photograph of the wedding to the Associated Press in Honolulu the next day. But the picture was of such poor quality that few papers used it. However, unbeknownst to the couple, the wedding had been captured through the telephoto lens of a Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer, who was on a boat in the waters off the golf course below the cliff's. The photo later appeared on a two*page spread in People and in papers and magazines around the world.
Microsoft had little to say about the wedding. Its public relations firm released a brief statement for the media: “William (Bill) H. Gates III and Melinda French wed last evening in a private ceremony amongst close friends and family. Bill Gates is chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation. The small, private wedding ceremony was traditional in style and was performed by a Catholic priest. The bride wore a traditional white gown; the groom wore a tuxedo.” The press release then quoted Gates as saying, “We are both extremely happy and looking forward to a long, wonderftd life together.”
Many of the wedding guests left for Honolulu the morning after the wedding on the Boeing 737 chartered by Gates. The couple left for their honeymoon aboard a private jet for an even more private destination. They spent the next week at the Wakaya Club, a 2,200-acre resort at one end of a five-square- mile private island about 90 miles from the main island of Fiji, described in travel brochures as boasting “emerald lagoons, soaring cliffs and shell-strewn beaches,” as well as a nine-hole golf course, tennis and croquet courts, and speedboats. The resort, owned by businessman David Gilmour, has accommodations for only 16 pampered couples, who pay about $900 per night. Children are not allowed. The only access to the resort is by private jet.
It was to prove both a sad and a happy time for the Gates family, for within days of returning to Seattle from the wedding, Mary Gates entered the hospital. The cancer was raging out of control through her body. She would soon go into seclusion, seeing only close friends and family in the last months of her life. She died in her sleep at home on June 10, 1994, at the age of 64. Her son got the call in the middle of the night and rushed to the family home.
“It was a sad hour,” said the family minister, the Reverend Dale Turner. “Bill took his mother’s death very, very hard. Bill loved his mother und she loved him. They were so close. That love helped to shape his life during his early years, and it blossomed in many ways later on.”
After Gates and Allen had moved Microsoft from Seattle to Bellevue (the site prior to the Redmond campus), across Lake Washington, on January 1, 1979, Mary Gates would often call her son several times a day to check on him. She even wrote him letters. When Gates took business trips out of town, his mother often went along. Even well into his late thirties, Gates would try to visit his mother at least once a week.
