SEATTLE _ Not long after The Foundation for AIDS Research learned it was among the organizations in Ric Weiland's extraordinary $170 million bequest, news broke that a man had been cured of HIV.
The "Berlin patient" _ Timothy Ray Brown, a Seattleite living at the time in Germany _ gave the foundation a new focus on cure research.
The recession was ramping up, and most nonprofits were cutting back. But thanks to Weiland's gift, the foundation could count on a million dollars a year, for nine years.
"It couldn't have come at a better time," said Marcella Flores, associate research director of the foundation, known as amfAR. "It really set us on a path, a very strong path, to a cure."
One can only imagine what Weiland, who took his own life in 2006 at age 53, would have thought. Once Microsoft's second employee, he was HIV-positive and suffering from depression. His belief that the disease was starting to assert itself, after years of lying dormant, contributed to the despair he felt at the end, according to his partner, Mike Schaefer.
In recent weeks, as 10 organizations devoted to LGBTQ causes received their last payments, they assessed the impact of a donor whose name is not widely known but whose generosity helped produce scientific, legal and cultural transformations. His gift came at just the right time to jump-start breakthrough HIV research and fuel the fight for same-sex marriage that culminated in victory at the U.S. Supreme Court.
His bequest also helped change the landscape at schools around the country, many of which now have gay-straight alliances and anti-bullying policies.
"We didn't see a lot of this progress coming in our lifetime," Schaefer said. "Remember back to that time," he said. George W. Bush was president, and he supported a constitutional amendment that would limit marriage to heterosexual couples. "We had kind of given up on gay marriage," Schaefer said.
It was also before the era of one-pill-a-day AIDS management, never mind realistic hope for a cure.
Still, he thought big.
"He seeded a national movement," said Kris Hermanns, CEO of Seattle's Pride Foundation. Weiland left more than $65 million to LGBTQ causes and HIV research.
And his legacy doesn't stop there.
He donated roughly $54 million to Stanford University, his alma mater, $22 million to environmental groups and $8 million apiece to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle Children's and United Way of King County. Much of that funding came in the form of endowments, to be invested and tapped into on an ongoing basis.
