Bernard Marcus, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants who rose from a tenement house in Newark, New Jersey, to found the Home Depot Corporation, one of the world's largest and most famous brands, spoke late Monday in Boca Raton, Florida. died at his home. He was 95 years old.
Marcus' death was confirmed by officials from his nonprofit organization, Job Creators Network, who said it was a natural cause.
Marcus is best known as one of the founders of Home Depot, which he worked with financier Ken Langone and businessman Arthur Blank to create a company that employs nearly half a million people in thousands of stores across the country. I started a company from scratch.
“The entire Home Depot family is deeply saddened by the death of our co-founder Bernie Marcus,” a Home Depot spokesperson told the Post. “He was a skilled tradesman and retail visionary. But more importantly, he cared about our employees, customers and community above all else. is.”
He made a fortune in the process. He is said to be worth around $6 billion.
With 2,300 stores, Home Depot is the largest chain of its kind in the country, with a stock market value of more than $400 billion.
But neither Mr. Marcus' wealth nor the basics of the story of Home Depot, the idea for a national home improvement store chain he brought back to Langone 50 years ago after being fired as the home improvement company's CEO, made Mr. It's not a fair evaluation. 'Legacy.
He was a billionaire capitalist and a regular on Fox News and FOX Business, and he took pride in evangelizing the power of free market capitalism to lift people like himself out of poverty.
He is also a philanthropist, having donated millions of dollars to charities and politicians he believes can make a difference in promoting free market solutions and protecting the entrepreneurial class.
A little more than a decade ago, he founded the Job Creators Network, a free-market advocacy group that lobbies on behalf of small businesses.
As the 2024 elections approach, he gears up for a new battle. To help elect my friend Donald Trump for a second term as president, and to save the country from the devastating effects of the progressive policies Joe Biden has imposed on Americans. and his vice president and current Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris.
Trump paid tribute to the “legendary entrepreneur” in a post on his social media platform Truth Social as he awaited the election results.
“He supported me from the beginning and was there for me whenever I needed help or advice,” Trump wrote.
Even in his mid-90s, the only thing that seemed to be slowing Marcus down was the debilitating effects of age. As Marcus told me in an interview last November, “Charlie, I'm 94 years old. Unfortunately, I have a 60-year-old brain and a 94-year-old body.”
Bernard Marcus was born on May 12, 1929 in Newark, New Jersey, one of four children. Her parents immigrated from Russia just before the Great Depression began. Despite his humble upbringing, he had dreams of becoming a doctor.
He was accepted to Harvard Medical School, but later said he could not afford to attend because Jewish students applied for additional tuition. .
He completed his MD and pharmacy degrees at Rutgers University, but fell in love with retail. While in college, Marcus realized that he was a great salesman and could connect with people. It was a skill he honed while spending summers as a stand-up comic in the Borscht Belt.
These skills led him to success in a series of jobs, eventually joining a publicly traded hardware store chain named Handy Dan, where he became CEO. Then, in 1978, his life changed dramatically when he and his number two Arthur Blank were outnumbered in an internal power struggle and forced out of their positions. At age 49, Marcus became unemployed for the first time in his adult life.
Marcus said his firing was the worst thing that could have happened to him, but it turned into a blessing. He dreamed of something innovative: a hardware store of all hardware stores. Rather than buying tools in one place and cement in another, we wanted to create a one-stop shopping experience for home improvement.
He discussed his concept with his friend and financier Ken Langone. He was a banker who had made a name for himself years earlier by exposing Ross Perot's electronic data system, which eventually made Perot a billionaire and placed him among the greats of American business.
After Mr. Marcus was fired, he timidly asked Mr. Langone, another loquacious New Yorker with troubled roots, if he knew of any openings.
Bernie relayed the conversation to me as follows: “Kenny said, 'You just got hit in the ass with a golden horseshoe.'”
Mr. Langone offered, “I want you to gather investors and get me into business.''
Home Depot was born and grew into a company with a market capitalization of $390 billion.
Handy Dan closed over 30 years ago.
Marcus, Blank and Langone shared the title of co-founder of Home Depot. In the process, they all became millionaires and philanthropists, giving away more money than they earned to various charities.
Marcus retired from the hardware store in 2002 and his life took a new direction. He believed that the free market system and small businesses were the foundation of a great American economy.
It was then that he became a political activist, donating to causes and politicians who shared his vision that capitalism created more wealth than any previous economic system. And it was under attack by an increasingly left-wing party that controls big government and the Democratic Party.
He started the Job Creators Network 13 years ago to lobby on behalf of small and medium-sized businesses. Because, as he told me, it would be nearly impossible to start a company like Home Depot today. Regulations, taxes, and large government burdens are nearly insurmountable obstacles for modern entrepreneurs.
Mr. Bernie has long been a key figure on cable television preaching the need to preserve free-market capitalism.
It was in this way that I came to know him. And to be completely clear, I have a lot of respect for him too. When I interviewed Bernie last year, he was coming to terms with the fact that his time on earth was short. He had to cram a lot of work into a short period of time.
“That's why, even at 94 years old, I'm putting a lot of money into making sure we get the right people in front of them,” he told me.
A few weeks ago, I heard that Bernie's health had taken a turn for the worse. He intended to hold out until the election because he believed that much was at stake. He and Donald Trump are close friends. Although she supported Trump in this year's presidential election, she was not without concerns about Trump's temperament.
But those fears paled in comparison to what he has been witnessing from the administration of Democrats, particularly Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Last year, he called Biden “a dunce” and “the most divisive president I've ever seen.” Biden's labeling of Trump supporters as “trash” proved his point.
More than that, Bernie was horrified by the country's far-left drift during the Biden administration and the stupidity of the current Democratic nominee for vice president. An economic policy that widens the economic gap between the rich and the poor through unnecessary spending that fuels inflation. An administrative state that crushed entrepreneurship. Rampant anti-Semitism staining the elite universities that Biden and Harris ignored.
He donated to Trump, but wished he had the power to campaign for Trump and was trying to hold out until after the election to end the Biden-Harris disaster. Of course he wasn't, but we heard last night that he passed away peacefully with his family and friends, confident in his belief that he made a difference in this election and beyond.
