Bernie Marcus, co-founder of The Home Depot, dies at 95

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) – Bernie Marcus — who co-founded a home improvement retail chain that changed the American business landscape and then built a world-class aquarium for his adopted home city — has died. He was 95.

The Home Depot announced his passing on Tuesday morning.

“The entire Home Depot family is deeply saddened by the death of our co-founder Bernie Marcus. We owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to Bernie,” they said in a statement. “He was a master merchant and a retail visionary. But even more importantly, he valued our associates, customers and communities above all. He’s left us with an invaluable legacy and the backbone of our company: our values.”

Born in 1929 and raised by his Russian Jewish parents in Newark, New Jersey, Marcus went to work at age 13, abandoning his ambitions to become a Harvard-educated doctor to eventually earn a degree from Rutgers. He worked briefly as a pharmacist before entering retail sales. By the mid-1970s, Marcus was an executive at Los Angeles-based Handy Dan Home Improvement Centers, where he met Arthur Blank.

In April 1978 Marcus and Blank were fired, and friend and business associate Ken Langone convinced Marcus to open his own business. Together, Marcus, Blank and Langone founded The Home Depot, and opened their first-ever two stores in Atlanta on June 22, 1979.

Within two years, The Home Depot went public, and today has more than 2,300 stores in North America.

Marcus retired from actively working at The Home Depot in 2002, and then donated more than $200 million from his personal fortune to build the Georgia Aquarium, one of the world’s largest. Since it opened in November 2005, the aquarium has become one of Atlanta’s and Georgia’s top tourist destinations.

In 1999 and in conjunction with writer Bob Andelman, Marcus and Blank co-wrote “Built From Scratch: How a Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion.” The book was released to coincide with The Home Depot’s 20th anniversary.

In a statement, Blank said he was “heartbroken” at the news.

“Today, I’ve lost a father-figure, mentor, brother and business and life partner,” he wrote. “While this loss is profoundly painful, I am grateful for the close to 60 years we spent together, navigating challenges and celebrating successes, and I am honored to have been part of Bernie’s remarkable life.”

Atlanta’s corporate leaders have long been involved with the city’s philanthropic communities, and Marcus was no exception. In 1991, Marcus founded the Israel Democracy Institute and the Marcus Institute, which later became the Marcus Autism Center after a merger with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. In 2002, he donated $3.9 million to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to create an emergency anthrax response center.

In 2009 Marcus was inducted as a Georgia Trustee by the Georgia Historical Society and the governor’s office.

Atlanta News First and Atlanta News First+ provide you with the latest news, headlines and insights.

Copyright 2024 WANF. All rights reserved.