Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 3, 1994 TAG: 9401030006
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
When Brooks came across Doug and Patty Brown lugging a load of groceries and their 15-month-old daughter, he gave them a lift to their Owasso, Okla., home - and more.
On the way home, the Browns told the kind stranger that their car had broken down and they couldn't afford to get it fixed. About an hour later, Brooks turned up again and handed over the keys to a 1986 Caprice Classic.
Thinking he looked familiar, Patty Brown said, she asked the donor if he wasn't Garth Brooks. "Santa" smiled and said he was just a big fan.
"He didn't do it for praise or glory," said Pat Mahl, Brooks' mother-in-law.
\ "The Private Island" stayed that way New Year's Day for Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates' wedding to Melinda French. Gates, one of the nation's richest men, hired his own security force to keep reporters and photographers away while he and French exchanged vows on the 17th hole of The Challenge golf course.
The 38-year-old Harvard dropout bought out all of the available rooms at the 250-room Manele Bay Hotel to make sure no unwanted visitors mingled among the 130 wedding guests staying there. And he hired every helicopter on Maui to keep photographers out of them.
Among the guests: the only American wealthier than Gates, investor Warren Buffett; Katharine Graham, former publisher of The Washington Post; rock musician Alice Cooper; and country star Willie Nelson.
Gates, whose fortune is estimated at $7 billion, is co-founder, chairman and chief executive of Microsoft. French, 29, is a Microsoft business unit manager.
by CNB