Bill Gates's first close friend, Kent Evans, died on May 28, 1972, at age 17 in a mountaineering accident, while the two Lakeside School students were planning to spend the summer working on a programming project together. Gates, who has called it 'the only negative thing in my childhood,' was devastated; he and Paul Allen grew closer afterward. Decades later, Gates devoted a moving passage of his memoir to Evans, reflecting on a brilliant friend whose life was cut short before the computing revolution they had dreamed about.