Proposing a New Inductee to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans: William “Bill” Henry Gates III The purpose of this paper is to develop a relevant definition of what it means to be a “great American” today, and to demonstrate what it takes to satisfy these definitional criteria. In the information technology field, one name stands above the rest in personifying the types of enduring contributions to the nation that make an individual a “great American.” Indeed, William “Bill” Henry Gates III is an exemplary model of a highly successful modern business leader, entrepreneur and philanthropist. In support of this nomination, an informative summary of Gates’ life and description of his contributions to the nation are followed by a summary of the biographical research and important findings concerning nominating Gates for the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Established in 1900 to honor the best of the best in American leadership, the Hall of Fame for Great Americans features 98 bronze busts nestled in an outdoor colonnade at Bronx Community College was the first “hall of fame” in the country. When it was established at the fin de siècle, induction into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans was considered a major achievement, and even the elections for new nominees received nationwide press coverage (Dolnick1). In fact, some contemporary observers suggest that the institution was so famous that it was referenced in the motion picture, “The Wizard of Oz,” when the Munchkins proclaim that Dorothy will be “. . . a bust, be a bust, be a bust in the Hall of Fame!” (as cited in Dolnick 2).

Following the sale of the Hall of Fame in 1973, however, the collection of bronze busts of great Americans has been largely ignored and forgotten despite the luminaries that are honored there and there have been no new inductees since 1976 (Dolnick 2). Clearly, what the Hall of Fame needs at present is some fresh blood in its hallowed halls who reflect the increasing diversity as well as the latest enduring contributions that individuals have made to American society and culture. As noted in the introduction, one such individual who satisfies the definitional criteria for a great American is Bill Gates whose life and contributions are discussed...

Gates II, a successful attorney at law in Seattle and Mary Gates, who was an educator prior to becoming a mother to his older sister, Kristi; Bill would also have a younger sister, Libby (Biography 1). There were few signs from Bill’s early youth that suggested he was destined for greatness, and in many ways he was an exceedingly normal child who was fond of playing board games and reading science fiction (Biography 2).
Moreover, unlike many of his peers, Bill was a bright student who was actually good at math in elementary school, but these qualities contributed to his becoming easily bored with schoolwork and he was frequently in trouble as a result (Biography 2). In an attempt to transfer Bill’s energies into something more productive, his parents signed him up with the Boy Scouts where he also excelled, earning the coveted Eagle Scout award, earned by just 4% of all Boy Scouts (Wendell 2). These early experiences contributed to Bill’s competitiveness, a quality that he would need when his parents transferred him to the Lakeside Preparatory School where he was introduced to computers as well as his future partner, Paul Allen (Biography 2).

It is important to keep in mind that the computers that Bill was introduced to at this period in history did not resemble modern personal computers or laptops; rather, they were energy-hungry behemoths that occupied entire rooms. Indeed, an ordinary cell phone today has far more processing power than these early computers. Moreover, during this period in history, computer programmers used labor-intensive fragile punched cards for data input, but Bill took to the technology in a major way and wrote and compiled his first program, tic-tac-toe, on a mainframe computer with time rented by his school (Biography 2).

His tendency to get into trouble at school followed him to Lakeside where Bill and some of his friends were actually banned from future computer usage as a result of their hacking the system in an effort to obtain additional time on the computer, but there privileges were restored when they agreed to help the school identify bugs in the computer system in exchange for additional computer time (Biography 2).…