Bernard Marcus, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who managed to build Home Depot Corp., one of the world’s largest and most recognizable brands, out of a tenement in Newark, N.J., died Oct. 20 at his home in Boca Raton. Died at home. , Florida. He was 95 years old.
Marcus’s death was confirmed by an official of his non-profit group, the Jobs Creator Network, who said he died of natural causes.
Marcus is best known as one of the founders of Home Depot, teaming up with financier Ken Langone and businessman Arthur Blank to create a company that employs nearly half a million people working in thousands of stores across the country .
On the way he collected a lot of money; It is said that his wealth is around 6 billion dollars.
Home Depot, with its 2,300 locations, is the largest chain of its kind in the country, with a stock-market value of more than $400 billion.
Yet neither his assets nor the basics of the Home Depot story — the idea for a nationwide chain of home-improvement stores that he started in Langone 50 years ago after being fired as CEO of a hardware chain — Doesn’t do full justice to Marcus. legacy.
He is a burgeoning billionaire capitalist, appearing regularly on Fox News and Fox Business, where he took pride in preaching about the power of free market capitalism to lift people out of poverty, as it did for him. Had gone.
He was also a philanthropist, giving away millions of this money to charities and politicians he believed could make a difference in advancing free-market solutions and protecting the entrepreneurial class.
A little more than a decade ago, he created the Job Creators Network, a free-market advocacy group that lobbies on behalf of small businesses.
As the 2024 election approaches, he gears up for another fight: to help elect his friend Donald Trump president for a second term and save the country from what he believes is That the progressive policies imposed on the American people by Joe Biden were having devastating effects. and his vice president, current Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris.
Even in his mid-90s, the only thing slowing Marcus down was the debilitating effects of old age, or as he told me in an interview last December “Charlie, I’m 94 years old. Unfortunately. , I have a 60 year old brain, a 94 year old body.
