Bruce Bastian, a Founder of WordPerfect, Is Dead at 76
Bruce Bastian, a founder of the WordPerfect Corporation, whose word processor was the favored tool for writing during the early days of personal computing — and who later, after coming out as gay, renounced his Mormon faith and funded L.G.B.T.Q.
causes — died on June 16 at his home in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 76. Michael Marriott, the executive director of the B.W.
Bastian Foundation, said the cause was complications of pulmonary fibrosis. Mr. Bastian was finishing graduate school at Brigham Young University in the late 1970s when he founded the company that became WordPerfect with Alan C.
Ashton, his computer science professor and a grandson of David O. McKay, the influential former president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
