Sam Walton

Early life and education

Samuel Moore Walton was born to Thomas Gibson Walton and Nancy Lee, in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. He lived there with his parents on their farm until they moved in 1923. However, farming did not provide enough money to raise a family, and Thomas Walton went into farm mortgaging. He worked for his brother's Walton Mortgage Company, which was an agent for Metropolitan Life Insurance, where he foreclosed on farms during the Great Depression.

He and his family (now with another son, James, born in 1921) moved from Oklahoma. They moved from one small town to another for several years, mostly in Missouri. While attending eighth grade in Shelbina, Missouri, Sam became the youngest Eagle Scout in the state's history. In adult life, Walton became a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America.

Eventually the family moved to Columbia, Missouri. Growing up during the Great Depression, he did chores to help make financial ends meet for his family as was common at the time. He milked the family cow, bottled the surplus, and drove it to customers. Afterwards, he would deliver Columbia Daily Tribune newspapers on a paper route. In addition, he sold magazine subscriptions. Upon graduating from David H. Hickman High School in Columbia, he was voted "Most Versatile Boy". After high school, Walton decided to attend college, hoping to find a better way to help support his family. He attended the University of Missouri as an ROTC cadet. During this time, he worked various odd jobs, including waiting tables in exchange for meals. Also during his time in college, Walton joined the Zeta Phi chapter of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He was also tapped by QEBH, the well-known secret society on campus honoring the top senior men, and the national military honor society Scabbard and Blade. Additionally, Walton served as president of Burall Bible Class, a large class of students from the University of Missouri and Stephens College.

Walton earned Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of Missouri in 1940. At the university, he was voted "permanent president" of the class.

Furthermore, he elaborated that he learned from a very early age that it was important for them as kids to help provide for the home, to be givers rather than takers. Walton realized while (later) serving in the army, that he wanted to go into retailing and to go into business for himself.

Walton joined JCPenney as a management trainee in Des Moines, Iowa, He resigned in 1942 in anticipation of being inducted into the military for service in World War II. With the help of a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law, Leland Robson, plus $5,000 he had saved from his time in the Army, Walton purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas. Walton ensured the shelves were consistently stocked with a wide range of goods. His second store, the tiny "Eagle" department store, was down the street from his first Ben Franklin and next door to its main competitor in Newport.

With the sales volume growing from $80,000 to $225,000 in three years, Walton drew the attention of the landlord, P. K. Holmes, whose family had a history in retail. Admiring Sam's great success and desiring to reclaim the store and franchise rights for his son, he refused to renew the lease. The lack of a renewal option, together with the prohibitively high rent of 5% of sales, were early business lessons to Walton. Despite forcing Walton out, Holmes bought the store's inventory and fixtures for $50,000, which Walton called "a fair price".

With a year left on the lease, but the store effectively sold, Walton, his wife, Helen, and his father-in-law managed to negotiate the purchase of a new location on the downtown square of Bentonville, Arkansas. Walton negotiated the purchase of a small discount store, and the title to the building, on the condition that he get a 99-year lease to expand into the shop next door. The owner of the shop next door refused six times, and Walton had all but given up on Bentonville when his father-in-law, without Sam's knowledge, paid the shop owner a final visit and $20,000 to secure the lease. He had just enough left from the sale of the first store to close the deal and reimburse Helen's father. They opened for business with a one-day remodeling sale on May 9, 1950.

A chain of Ben Franklin stores With the new Bentonville "Five and Dime" opening for business and, away, a year left on the lease in Newport, the money-strapped young Walton had to learn to delegate responsibility.

After succeeding with two stores at such a distance (and with the postwar baby boom in full effect), Walton became enthusiastic about scouting more locations and opening more Ben Franklin franchises. (Also, having spent countless hours behind the wheel, and with his close brother James "Bud" Walton having been a pilot in the war, he decided to buy a small second-hand airplane. Both he and his son John would later become accomplished pilots and log thousands of hours scouting locations and expanding the family business.)

First Walmart

The first true Walmart opened on July 2, 1962, in Rogers, Arkansas. Called the Wal-Mart Discount City store, it was located at 719 West Walnut Street, and launched a determined effort to market American-made products. Included in the effort was a willingness to find American manufacturers who could supply merchandise for the entire Walmart chain at a price low enough to meet the foreign competition.

As the Meijer store chain grew, it caught the attention of Walton. He came to acknowledge that his one-stop-shopping center format was based on Meijer's original innovative concept. Contrary to the prevailing practice of American discount store chains, stores were located in smaller towns, not larger cities. To be near consumers, the only option at the time was to open outlets in small towns. The model offered two advantages. First, existing competition was limited and secondly, if a store was large enough to control business in a town and its surrounding areas, other merchants would be discouraged from entering the market.

Personal life Walton married Helen Robson on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1943.

Walton supported various charitable causes. Walton was a long-term supporter of country music, with a particular appreciation of Dolly Parton, whose debut album Hello, I'm Dolly became the first album to be widely stocked in Walmart in 1967.

Religion He and Helen were active in 1st Presbyterian Church in Bentonville; Sam served as an Elder and a Sunday School teacher, teaching high school age students. The family made substantial contributions to the congregation. Walton worked the concept of “service leadership” into the corporate structure of Walmart based on the concept of Christ being a servant leader and emphasized the importance of serving others based in Christianity.

Health issues and death Walton (right) and President George H. W. Bush (left) in March 1992; Walton died 18 days after this photo was taken. In 1982, Walton was diagnosed and treated for Hairy cell leukemia. He was diagnosed with bone cancer in 1990 and had gone through radiation therapy and chemotherapy at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Walton died on Sunday, April 5, 1992, a week after his 74th birthday and three months shy of Walmart's thirtieth anniversary, of multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, in Little Rock, Arkansas. A few days earlier, according to his son, Walton was still reviewing sales data in his hospital bed. The news of his death was relayed by satellite to all 1,960 Walmart stores. At the time, his company employed 400,000 people. Annual sales of nearly $50 billion flowed from 1,735 Walmarts, 212 Sam's Clubs, and 13 Supercenters.

Honors and Awards The bust of Sam Walton in the Business Building at the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. In 1998, Walton was included in Times list of 100 most influential people of the 20th Century. Walton was honored for his work in retail in March 1992, just one month before his death, when he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George H. W. Bush. (Bill Gates first headed the list in 1992, the year Walton died.) Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. also runs Sam's Club warehouse stores. Walmart operates in the United States and in more than fifteen international markets, including: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, India, South Africa, Botswana, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, Lesotho, Eswatini (Swaziland), Honduras, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua and the United Kingdom.

Scholastic Sam Walton was awarded Honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) degree from the University of Missouri in 1984.

At the University of Arkansas, Sam M. Walton College of Business is named in his honor. Walton was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1992.