William and Mary had three children, two girls named Kristi and Libby and a son they nicknamed Trey. Since William was a successful Seattle attorney and Mary was a school teacher they thought a career in law would be an appropriate pursuit for their only son as well.
Imagine their pleasure when Trey scored 1590 out of a possible 1600 on the SAT. His parents were thrilled when he was accepted into Harvard in 1973. But Trey had a hard time finding a clear focus for his studies and spent most of his time playing around on the schools computers.
According to Trey’s parents they were “sick when he told us he planned to leave college to take advantage of a window of opportunity he believed would be long gone by the time he graduated from Harvard.” Much to the dismay of his parents, he dropped out of school forever in 1975.
In the father’s recent book, Showing Up for Life, Trey’s dad explains the lesson he learned as a father: “Perhaps there’s a lesson in this for parents of other curious children who, from the start, require the freedom to meet life on their own terms: It is that there is no statute of limitations on the dreams you have for your children. And there is no way to predict how much delight you might feel when those dreams are realized in a far different way than you could have imagined.”
Incidentally, Trey was chosen as a nickname because this son was the fourth William in the family tree. You may know him by his adult name, Bill Gates.
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