Bill Gates Sr. Regents for the University of Washington, and is a co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which his son Bill and his daughter-in-law Melinda founded. He has served as a director for Costco Wholesale, a bulk retail corporation, since 2003. He is also a founding co-chair of the Pacific Health Summit. He has adopted the suffix "Sr." to distinguish himself from his more famous son. Gates is co-author, with Chuck Collins, of the book "Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes", a defense of the policies promoted by the estate tax. He married Mary Maxwell Gates
USS Thomas S. Gates put into Gibraltar on 10 October, she turned over with guided missile cruiser on 16 October before sailing to Bermuda, arriving there 25 October 1997. That same day, just after embarking crew relatives for a Tiger cruise home, the cruiser responded to a distress call, recovering two crewmen from the drifting sailboat "Glou Glou". "Thomas S. Gates" arrived home at Norfolk on 27 October 1997. On 25 September 1999, "Thomas S. Gates" responded to a call for assistance from the United States Coast Guard vessel , then in the process of conducting boarding operations of the suspect merchant vessel "Love".