assistant secretary of transportation
'She was the most engaged parent and she had high expectations of all of us,' says Libby Armintrout, Bill's younger sister. 'Not just grades and that sort of thing, but how we behaved in public, how we would be socially.Sealing Machine' 　　Bill Gates at an early age became a diligent learner. He read the World Book Encyclopedia series start to finish. His parents encouraged his appetite for reading by paying for any book he wanted.Impulse Sealer 　　Still, they worried that he seemed to prefer books to people. They tried to temper that streak by forcing him to be a greeter at their parties and a waiter at his father's professional functions.Case Sealer 　　Then, at age 11, Bill Sr. says, the son blossomed intellectually,Case Erector peppering his parents with questions about international affairs, business and the nature of life. 　　'It was interesting and I thought it was great,' Mr. Gates Sr. Strapping Machinesays. 'Now, I will say to you, his mother did not appreciate it. It bothered her.'
　　The son pushed against his mother's instinct to Shrink Machinecontrol him, sparking a battle of wills. All those things that she had expected of him -- a clean room, being at the dinner table on time, not biting his pencils -- suddenly turned into a big source of friction. The two fell into explosive arguments.Stretch Film　　'He was nasty,' Ms. Armintrout says of her brother. 　　Mr. Gates Sr. played the role of peacemaker. 'He'd sort of break them apart and calm things down,' says Ms. Blake, the eldest sibling. Coding Machine 　　The battles reached a climax at dinner one night when Bill Gates was around 12. Over the table, he shouted at his mother, in what today he describes as 'utter, total sarcastic, smart-ass kid rudeness.' 　　That's when Mr. Gates Sr., in a rare blast of temper, threw the glass of water in his son's face. Paper Folding Machine 　　He and Mary brought their son to a therapist. 'I'm at war with my parents over who is in control,' Bill Gates recalls telling the counselor. Reporting back, the counselor told his parents that their son would ultimately win the battle for independence, and their best course of action was to ease up on him. 　　Mr. Gates Sr. understood that counsel because Stretch Wrapperof his own childhood, an hour's ferry ride from Seattle in the working-class town of Bremerton. 'There wasn't a lot of structure to my growing up,' he says. 'I had an awful lot of discretion about where I went, what I did, who I did it with.'china casting 　　His mother was doting and easygoing. His sister,prada shoes his only sibling, was seven years older. And his father was a workaholic who sacrificed child-rearing to work at a furniture store he owned with a partner. 'His complete focus was on the store,' Bill Sr. says. 　Mr. Gates Sr. early on built a life outside of his home. Next door, max 90the Braman family had two boys for him to play with and a father who would become his most important role model.
　　That man, Dorm Braman, had built his business and piezo ceramic elementwould later become a Naval officer, mayor of Seattle and a U.S. assistant secretary of transportation. In the late 1930s, Mr. Braman brought Bill Sr. on family road trips across the country. He was scoutmaster of Bill Sr.'s Boy Scout troop, leading the boys on hikes through buzzerthe Olympic Mountains and driving them in a beat-up bus to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. The troop spent two years building a log house from Douglas firs they felled themselves. Mr. Braman had 'no sense of personal limitations whatsoever,' says Mr. Gates Sr.running Shoes 　　Bill Sr. and Mary ultimately took a page from that upbringing: They backed off. They enrolled their son in a school that they thought would give him more freedom. That was the private Lakeside School, now known as the place where Bill Gates discovered computers.solar water heater supplier 　　Mr. Gates says he began to realize, ''Hey, I don't have to prove my position relative to my parents. I just have to figure out what I'm doing relative to the world.''
　　From age 13, he was given rare independence. He took off some nights to enjoy free use of the computers at the University of Washington. He spent chunks of time away from home -- much as his dad had done as a kid. He lived for a time in Olympia,Shrink Wrapper where he was a page in the state legislature, and in Washington, D.C. as a Congressional page. During his senior year, he took a break from school to work as a programmer at a power plant in southern Washington. And in what would become his first major collaboration with Paul Allen, his future Microsoft cofounder, Mr. Gates designed the 'Traf-O-Data', a device for counting cars traveling over a section of road.Carton Sealer　　His parents played supporting roles. They acquiesced when Bill quit Harvard and then moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to start Microsoft. It was a tough decision to back. 　　'Mary and I were both concerned about it -- I think she a bit more than I,' Bill Sr. says. 'Her expectations and mine were very ordinary expectations of people who have kids in college -- that they get a degree.'Wrapping Machine 　　The family support was one reason Mr. Soccer shoesGates decided to move Microsoft to Seattle, where he settled into a house not far from his parents. Ms. Gates arranged to have a maid clean her son's house, and made sure he had clean shirts for his big meetings. She also insisted he kept observing the family traditions, including the weekly Sunday dinner at his parents' house.