A Strange Story

Dominic Vautier
09-2010

This is a strange story from my past and it was not until years after these things happened that I was able to fit it back together.  My memory may have played some tricks on me, but I believed that the events actually did happen as I describe.

I do admit there have been a few memory gaps in my life, times when I simply cannot recall what I did.  One such time occurred just after I left the Salesians, a Catholic Order of priests and brothers who dedicate themselves to the education of buys.  When I left the Order in August 1964, I spent a month doing something before I enlisted in the U.S. Army that September.  What did I do?  To this day I have no idea.

By 1974, I had taken a full time job at Tektronix, in Beaverton, Oregon.  A few years later I started a private software development business on the side to make ends meet.  In addition I was also doing a lot of software work for our local Catholic parish in Milwaukee, Oregon.  Not to exaggerate it was a busy time for me and very stressful.  My private business was mostly software contract work with local banks, and retail establishments.  This was 1977 and large-scale IBM computers dominated the industry.  Some mid size, or “mini” computers were around as well as the small desktop micro computers (later to become PCs) but they were not taken seriously be the industry.

The parish I worked for had a very energetic pastor who wanted me to develop a number of systems: name and address, collection programs, fund raising, campaigns, on his microcomputer.  He got a Radio Shack TRS-80 model II, a small workhorse of a machine that had a rather good Basic (a computer language).  There were only two operating systems around at that time; one was the TRS-80 which was easy to program.  The other was CPM, which worked on a UNIX system. The CPM system proved too expensive and difficult and required a lot of specialized knowledge.

I developed several church applications for my parish using Basic, but I discovered some of the instructions were not working correctly.  I called the Radio Shack help line and they put me in contact with the vendor.  It turned out to be this little back room company in North Seattle so I called the number and a pleasant young man answered the phone.  He told me his name was Bill, and he seemed quite interested in what I was doing.  We actually talked for several hours, and I explained my idea of developing a more generalized microcomputer product that could be used on all computers and could therefore be sold for a cheep price.

Later that year the parish Pastor, Fr, Webber and I had a falling out about the direction I was going in my software development.  I was trying to come up with a generalized product and he wanted just his stuff done in his way on his microcomputer.  So our relationship ended.  It was around 1978.

My family and I moved with to Seattle in January 1979 and I took a job with The Boeing Company.  It was very busy work but I somehow kept my company “Clover Microsystems” going.  I also found several lucrative contracts up In Everett.  Again I started to develop software on the microcomputer for the local Catholic Church where my kids attended, and this experience proved very successful.  I also began working with an OBGYN doctor to help support his practice.  He needed a billing system, appointments, and Medicare reports, plus a lot of other stuff.  I developed this software on a newer TRS-80 model III, which had a system called TRSDOS, the first real good operating system I had ever seen. Again I needed some technical support so I called Radio Shack and they referred me to the same backroom outfit.  I called the number and asked for Bill.  He came on the phone and immediately recognized me.  We had another long talk and I told him about the medical system I was developing.  He said that he had moved to Albuquerque but that they would soon be back in Seattle.  He also said that I had some great ideas and suggested that if I wanted to, I could join their team.  I politely declined.  After all I had a solid job at Boeing and a successful business programming minicomputers and minicomputers were still little more than toys.  This whole thing with microcomputers did not sound like a good prospect anyway.  It had a possible future but I had a wife and kids to support.

Things began to get really bad for me over the next year, 1982.  I became very stressed out.  I had a breakdown.  I quit my good Boeing job and took off with the kids to California.  I finally came back but I was really a wreck.  It took me 6 months to regain my mental balance.  My wife promised to change her ways so I would not need to work so hard at two or three jobs.  She promised to sell our big expensive house and get a smaller one.  She promised a lot of things, none of which happened.  I stopped doing any work outside of Boeing.  I never wanted to look at another microcomputer.  I shut down my business.  I basically forgot everything that happened over those horrible and troubling times.

Four years later in 1989 I divorced my wife and by 1992 I was again married.

So one night about 10 years later I began recalling all that stuff that went on during those turbulent years, and wondered whatever happened to that little company and that nice guy Bill.  My God!  I suddenly realized who he had become—the richest man in the world.

We Christians call it Devine Providence.  Others may call it fate or kismet or luck or fortune or karma.  I never even thought about getting fabulously rich anyway, but in just that one instant I had to stand back and say----WOW!!