Bernie Marcus, co-founder Home Depot billionaire philanthropist and GOP donor dies at 95
“The entire Home Depot family is deeply saddened by the passing of our co-founder Bernie Marcus,” the company said in a statement. “We owe Bernie an immeasurable debt of gratitude. He was a master merchant and retail visionary. But more importantly, he put our partners, customers and communities above all else. He left us with an invaluable legacy and the foundation of our company: our values.
Marcus’s death was the first CNN reported on this.
Born to Russian-Jewish immigrants in 1929, Marcus grew up in Newark, New Jersey. Biography shared by Home Depot. He eventually entered pharmacy school and graduated from Rutgers University.
At age 49, Marcus co-founded Home Depot with Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank. a billionaire supporter of the Democratsin Atlanta in 1978 after they were both fired from another home improvement firm. They were helped by another major philanthropist and Republican donor, Ken Langone.
In 1981, Home Depot went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange for $12 per share. Today, the company’s shares are worth $395, which equates to a market cap of about $392 billion. Home Depot currently employs nearly half a million people.
Marcus served as the company’s CEO for nearly two decades and as chairman until his retirement in 2002. According to ForbesMarcus was worth about $11 billion at the time of his death.
Thanks to this wealth, Marcus became a prolific philanthropist. Through a foundation he created, he contributed to a variety of causes and projects focused on medicine and health care, Jewish and Israeli issues, free enterprise, and veterans’ support and community efforts.
A longtime booster of Atlanta civic projects, Marcus He donated $250 million to help build the Georgia Aquariumamong the largest in the world.
In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Marcus first donated to a political action committee supporting candidates such as former Florida governor Jeb Bush and former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. He finally threw his support behind Donald Trump, online op-ed writing His experience building Home Depot into a multi-billion dollar business meant he could not support the policies Hillary Clinton advocated.
In 2023, Marcus again endorsed Trump. In another online publicationhe said that while he was sometimes “disappointed” by Trump’s behavior, “we cannot let his bold style detract from his excellent handling of the United States in his first term.”
“Now is the time to unite to save the ‘American Dream’ for generations to come,” he wrote.