Philip Gale
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Philip Chandler Gale (1978, Los Angeles, California – March 13, 1998, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was a pioneering internet software developer and computer prodigy, an avid musician, and a Scientologist for most of his early life. Gale earned roughly a million dollars worth of stock options for his innovative internet service provider (ISP) programs at EarthLink, a firm established and bankrolled by members of the Church of Scientology. Gale chose Friday, the thirteenth of March (L. Ron Hubbard's birthday) as the day he wanted to commit suicide, falling to his death from a classroom window on the fifteenth floor of a building on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. Several years earlier, he had left the church after deciding Scientology was not for him.
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[edit] Family, early life and education
Gale was raised from birth to age fourteen in Scientology, a fourth generation Scientologist. He had a sister, Elizabeth Gale, and was the son of Scientologists David Gale, a software programmer who died from a heart attack in 1995, and Marie Gale, director of the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) in the Carolinas and chief national spokeswoman for CCHR. A practicing Scientologist since she was 12, she once told an interviewer, "First, foremost, and above all else - I am a Scientologist."
In 1986, his family moved to the sect's international spiritual headquarters in Clearwater, Florida, but around the same time he was sent to attend a Scientology school in Oregon. He was educated at the private Delphian School in Sheridan, Oregon, which was founded by L. Ron Hubbard's followers and dedicated to the sect's philosophies.
The Gale family is well known in Scientology circles for their commitment to the Church, and is noted for having made contributions of over $100,000 to the International Association of Scientologists (IAS).
Gale was admitted to MIT at the age of fifteen. At MIT, he joined the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity as a freshman in the fall of 1994, and he had just begun a music degree at the time of his suicide.
[edit] Software programming
Gale was a gangly, six foot, two inch red head. He took a break from MIT at the age of sixteen, accepting a position at EarthLink Network Inc. for a year, as director of research and development, with a $70,000 annual salary, after writing a key software program called Total Access while at MIT. The software allowed EarthLink's internet servers to connect far more customers to the Internet, giving the firm a competitive advantage and enabling its ascent to the top ranks among ISPs.
Gale abandoned his Scientology beliefs while he was at EarthLink, and became involved with the satirically named Church of the SubGenius, which specializes in debunking cults and has developed its own cult following among Gen-Xers.
Before his seventeenth birthday, Gale earned stock options, worth perhaps a million dollars, for writing software programs at the Los Angeles based company, that was run according to Hubbard's 'Management by Statistics' principles. Largely because of Gale's breakthrough, EarthLink now has more than one million customers and a market worth of $2 billion. Earthlink was founded by fellow Delphian alum, Sky Dayton, and heavily bankrolled by Scientologists, including Reed Slatkin, a disgraced ponzi scheme perpetrator who is currently serving a prison sentence for his crimes.
[edit] Death
After an investigation and an autopsy by Cambridge police, Gale's death at the age of nineteen, late on the evening of March 13, 1998, was ruled a suicide. For weeks, Gale had been asking classmates how to access the roof of MIT's tallest structure, the Green Building. There is the suggestion in Scientology that those who leave will commit suicide.[1]
On the blackboard of the MIT classroom in the Green Building, he wrote out Isaac Newton's equation for how an object accelerates as it falls, along with a sketch of a stick figure of someone tossing a chair. He signed the message, "Phil was here," picked up a chair, hurled it and then himself through a window on the fifteenth floor of the Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences building, more commonly known as Building 54 or the Green Building. "It was typical Phil. It's so like him to have planned a show," said an ex-girlfriend, Wellesley College student Christine Hrul, "He was so careful with things in his life, so methodical."
The last disc played on Gale's CD player that night was Steel Pole Bathtub's Scars from Falling Down.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- FactNet.org - 'Scientology Victim Memorials: Suicides & Suspicious Deaths', FactNet
- HollywoodInterrupted.com - 'Death of a 'Nethead', Mark Ebner (December 19, 2005)
- HolySmoke.org - 'Why did this brilliant MIT student jump to his death?' Joseph Mallia, Boston Herald (May 21, 1998)
- MIT.edu - 'Gale's Death Prompts Questions on Scientology', Jennifer Chung, The Tech, vol 118, no 16, p 1 (April 3, 1998)
- Scientology-Kills.org - 'Hello, and welcome to Philip Gale's personal web site. I was a Bona Fide Scientologist® during my life.'
- TheSchool.com - 'The Delphian School'
- TruthAboutScientology.com - 'Philip Chandler Gale - Scientology Service Completions', Kristi Wachter
