Sam Walton

Walton loved hunting, especially quail. Along with his wife he was active in the Church and also taught Sunday School. The Walton family also supported various charitable causes.

He suffered from two types of cancer: hairy-cell leukemia and bone marrow cancer during the later years of his life. Sam Walton died on April 5, 1992, aged 74.

He was born as Samuel Moore Walton on March 29, 1918, in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, U.S. to Thomas Gibson Walton and Nancy Lee. He had one younger brother, James. His father was a farmer who later entered farm mortgaging as farming did not provide enough money to provide for his family.

The family moved frequently during Sam’s early childhood. He was a good student and he became the youngest Eagle Scout in Missouri’s history while studying in the eighth grade in Shelbina, Missouri.

His family finally settled in Columbia, Missouri. He grew up during the Great Depression and took up numerous small jobs in order to help his family which was struggling to make ends meet. Among other chores, he sold magazine subscriptions and delivered newspapers. He also milked the family cow, bottled the surplus and sold it to customers.

He attended David H. Hickman High School in Columbia where he was voted the "Most Versatile Boy" at the time of his graduation in 1936.

He then went to the University of Missouri as a Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) cadet. He also joined the Zeta Phi chapter of Beta Theta Pi fraternity and served as President of Burall Bible Class, a large class of students from the University of Missouri and Stephens College.

Within days of his graduation, Walton joined J. C. Penney as a management trainee in Des Moines, Iowa. He resigned from the job in 1942 in order to serve in the World War II. Before joining the army, he worked at a DuPont munitions plant near Tulsa, Oklahoma for a while.

He joined the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps and supervised security at aircraft plants and prisoner of war camps. He eventually reached the rank of Captain in his army career and returned to civilian life once the war was over.

Married by now, he borrowed some money from his father-in-law and purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas, in 1945. The store was a franchise of the Butler Brothers chain.

He found considerable success in retail management with his pioneering concepts, and by the early 1960s, Walton, along with his brother James, owned 15 Ben Franklin franchises and one independent store.

Walton now planned to open bigger stores in rural areas with discounted prices in order to attract more customers and achieve a higher sales volume. However, the Ben Franklin executives were not in favor of this concept and turned down the plan.

Sam Walton is best remembered as the founder of the retail corporation, Wal-Mart. Founded in the United States in 1962, the company is now a multinational with over 11,000 stores in 28 countries, under a total 65 banners. Wal-Mart is also the world's largest company by revenue, as well as the biggest private employer in the world.