Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus dies

Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot who became a billionaire philanthropist and GOP donor, has died at age 95.

“The entire Home Depot family is deeply saddened by the passing of our co-founder Bernie Marcus,” the company said. “We owe Bernie an immense debt of gratitude. He was a master merchant and a retail visionary. But more importantly, he valued our employees, customers and community above all else. He has left us with an invaluable legacy and the backbone of our business: our values.

Marcus’ death was first reported by CNN.

Born to Russian-Jewish immigrants in 1929, Marcus grew up in Newark, New Jersey, according to a biography shared by Home Depot. He eventually enrolled in pharmacy school and graduated from Rutgers University.

At age 49, Marcus formed Home Depot with Arthur Blank, the Atlanta Falcons owner and a billionaire supporter of the Democratsin Atlanta in 1978 after both were fired from another home improvement company. They were helped with funding from Ken Langone, another major philanthropist and Republican donor.

In 1981, Home Depot was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange at $12 per share. stock. Today, the company’s shares are worth $395, which corresponds to a market value of about $392 billion. Home Depot now employs nearly half a million workers.

Marcus served as CEO for about the first two decades of the company and as chairman until his retirement in 2002. According to ForbesMarcus had a net worth of about $11 billion at the time of his death.

Thanks to that fortune, Marcus became a prolific philanthropist. Through a foundation he created, he gave to a variety of causes and projects focusing on medicine and health care, Jewish and Israeli issues, free initiative and veteran support, and community service.

A longtime booster of Atlanta civic projects, Marcus donated $250 million to help build the Georgia Aquariumamong the largest in the world.

In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Marcus initially donated to a political action committee supporting candidates such as former Florida governor Jeb Bush and former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. In the end, he threw his support behind Donald Trump, write in an online op-ed that his experience in turning Home Depot into a multibillion-dollar business meant that he could not support the policies that Hillary Clinton advocated.

In 2023, Marcus endorsed Trump again. In another online op-edhe said that while he had at times been “frustrated” by Trump’s behavior, “we cannot let his blunt style be the reason we walk away from his otherwise excellent stewardship of the United States during his first term.”

“Now is the time to unite to save The American Dream for future generations,” he wrote.