Sam Walton Biography-An American Dream

summer bathing in 10 years on a unique or December 2nd 1997 biography with Jack Perkins he was America's greatest salesman he build America's greatest fortune Sam Walton is a cheerleader a visionary a tough competitor who crushed many drivers welcome again to attention shoppers week guns biography our holiday look at some of the nation's legendary retailers tonight the Arkansas country boy who made himself a billionaire by slashing prices than slashing them some more he built a retail empire without ever letting go of the down-home ways Rover pickup truck went quail hunting dropped in and potluck dinners to neighbors in Bentonville Arkansas he was mr. Sam who just happened to be he the richest man in America [Music] [Applause] it could have been an entertainment circus and probably been just as successful so happy saying Sam Walton was America's bargain-basement billionaire the secret to his success was deceptively simple these old things cheaper much cheaper I think I learned a great deal and knowing Sam Walton he changed the economy of a nation he changed the way we shopped from his first day in business Sam Walton poured every ounce of his energy into building this discount empire he never thought about anything except building Walmart growing Walmart and grow Walmart he did it outgrew every other retail chain and earned him the largest fortune in America [Music] the Oklahoma Territory of the late 1800s was a rugged still untamed land about to undergo rapid change thousands of settlers were moving west to escape the ravages left by the Civil War and among them was Sam Walton's great-uncle JW Walton Walton staked his claim for a homestead in the tall grass lands of the Osage Plains over the years he watched as less fortunate settlers failed returned East or perished in the harsh Prairie winters and in this situation JW saw an opportunity for someone with a little cash and a lot of grit he opened a land agent office which made loans and repossessed failed farms on behalf of the big banks in Chicago the business prospered through the early part of this century and in 1917 JW s nephew Thomas joined the agency it would be Thomas's grim task to evict farmers who couldn't make their payments the same year he joined the agency Thomas married an energetic eighteen year old named Nancy Lee Lawrence their first child Samuel Moore Walton was born on March 29 1918 and this hard luck economy sons were valued for the work they could do on the farm so the parents were doubly pleased when three years later James Lawrence later called bud was born the two boys were close from the start bud looked up to his older brother who he said could excel at anything he set his mind to Sam Walton was an active and inquisitive child from the start at age three he wandered out of his home and ended up at the nearby schoolhouse he sat listening to the teacher for hours before his frantic mother found him after the first world war the plains states met with more hard times farm prices plummeted in Oklahoma and Sam's father decided to take his family to Missouri to look for greener pastures but things only got worse first the country was hit by the Great Depression then in 1933 when Sam was 15 the Dust Bowl struck turning farm after farm into Ferren wasteland refugee from Sam's father like his uncle before him he repossessed the failed farms for the banks he grew up in the Dust Bowl in the 30s and his father's job for time was to go in and evict farmers from their Dust Bowl farms and Sam went with him and saw a lot of that I think he saw a lot of people go under the line of poverty he saw a lot of people sink under and I think somewhere along the way he made up his mind this this old boy is not gonna be poor he saw his father survived not by making a lot of money on one deal but by turning a small profit on each transaction and was a principal Sam Walton would use to undercut his retail competitors and build a fortune the families moved from town to town in search of work meant Sam and bud attended several grammar schools and Sam developed an easy outgoing personality from making new friends the Waltons were better off than most of their neighbors still Sam and bud were expected to work hard and to appreciate the value of a dollar Sam contributed to the families funds by selling milk from their cow after football practice Sam's father worked hard and traveled a lot and the financial difficulties of the day put pressure on the Waltons marriage in fact Sam would later describe his parents as two of the most coral some people who ever lived together they were divorced when I met him they I guess quarrels a great deal that's what he told me and that was a part of our agreement when we got married was that we were not going to do that the often tense atmosphere at home motivated Sam to find activities outside of the house he joined the Boy Scouts and learned skills that would make him a local hero one day at a picnic a classmate fell in the river without hesitating Sam jumped in and pulled him to shore a few weeks later he was honored for his bravery and was promoted to Eagle Scout the youngest in his town he lived all of the things that are in the Scout Oath I'll do my best to do my duty to God in my country to keep myself mentally awake and morally straight and that personifies his life handsome and gregarious Sam was popular at Hickman high school he was vice president of the junior class student council president senior year he also played almost every sport even then Sam was fiercely competitive he liked to post it as a quarterback he never lost a game his address to his graduating class was titled leadership they had the classic leadership resume his whole life and then as a young adult he clearly made up his mind that he wasn't gonna work for anybody in the fall of 1936 Sam entered the University of Missouri as an economics major Sam took a paper route and promptly turned it into an enterprise his fraternity brothers nicknamed him hustler Walton I worked my way through college with a hearing papers it was a good way to make money and I could hire substitutes and I hired a substitute when I needed one and that let me do other things that I wanted to do as busy as he was Sam had little time for a social life but one classmate recalled that Sam did all right with the girls after graduation in the spring of 1940 Sam went to work full time he began his career in retailing as a trainee at a JC Penney store in Des Moines Iowa his pay was $75 a month Sam also now began his lifelong study of the retail business he was helped along by JC Penney himself on a visit to the store mr. Penney showed Sam how to tie a package with the smallest amount of ribbon and still have it looked nice Sam Walton was enthusiastic about his job but he was never one of Penny's most thorough employees he hated to make customers wait while he fussed with paperwork so his books were a mess his boss even threatened to fire him saying that he was not cut out for retail work Sam was saved by his ability as a salesman and added about 25 dollars a month in commissions to his beginners salary by 1942 the US had joined the Second World War and Sam Walton and ROTC graduate was eager to get into the action after only 18 months at Penney's he quit to join the army but in spite of all his athleticism he didn't pass the physical because of a minor heart irregularity instead Sam was put on the non-combat reserve list and later said he was envious of his brother bud who went off to the Pacific as a bomber pilot while waiting to be called for duty Sam landed a job at a DuPont gunpowder factory near Tulsa he rented a room in the nearby town of Claremore one night in April of 1942 while bowling in Claremore Sam met his future wife Helen Robson Helen the college-educated daughter of a successful businessman was intrigued with the brash young Walton was very exciting what happened was I was with a date and we were gone bowling I came back to my seat and my date had gone up to bowl and there was this fella but it's right I never forget it right foot hung over the seat next to me and he said haven't I seen you someplace before I don't know when I've ever had anybody say that to me Sam called Helen a few weeks later and they had a whirlwind romance she was active and outdoorsy and Sam liked that about her when Sam was called into active duty in July he proposed to Helen she accepted and Sam left right away for training on the west coast the couple were married on Valentine's Day 1943 the newlyweds headed for Utah where Sam was stationed as a captain in the Army Intelligence Corps they had their first child Samuel Robson or Rob on October 28 1944 [Music] less than a year later the war ended returning GIS were reunited with their brides and starting families the country heaved a sigh of relief and Sam Walton shared the hopes of the legions of young Americans looking toward a bright future youngji eyes across the country were eager to leave the war years behind they set up with their families to claim their piece of the American dream Sam Walton was one of those young parents with a wife and baby in tow he had to come up with a plan for the future he had saved a little nest egg and his short stint in retail had shown him that that was a field with potential he decided that he was now ready to run his own store so in 1945 with a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law and 5,000 of his own Sam bought a small five and dime in a chain of Ben Franklin stores across the South and Midwest the store Sam bought in the small cotton and railroad town of Newport Arkansas was losing money badly but that didn't bother Sam he was confident that he could turn it around from the beginning Sam walked at the Ben Franklin policy that required him to purchase most of his stock from company outlets Sam knew he could get merchandise cheaper elsewhere so he found a clause in his agreement that allowed him to purchase a sizable percentage of goods from other sources Sam began to make midnight runs to buy cheaper supplies and he would then price them well below what other merchants charged he did it at night that was the best time to do it too he wanted to get back in time to get it in the store mark and in the store so that he could beat the Sterling stores that got across the street they just shipped us an order of ladies 39 cent retail panties Sam had seen what a good buy they were and Sunday morning he got in his car and drove to Little Rock and went down to cash wholesale Dan's at the warehouse the wholesale house and bought all they had so the next Saturday he had a window full of $0.39 back feet and I could have done the same thing but I just wasn't that aggressive I think that Sam was just more aggressive and it paid off Sam had no hesitation about undercutting the competition to him it was just good business he even found a way to beat out his rivals with his popcorn machine one Saturday I looked out there and Sam had moved his popcorn machine outside on the sidewalk and you could smell his popcorn coming and going for two or three blocks and he was selling twice as much popcorn as we were and he was out there with his shirt sleeves rolled up and perspiration dripping off of him practically while he was running that hot popcorn machine but it just proved to me how energetic he was working around the clock he achieved his goal of turning around the Newport store and within three years he repaid the loan from his father-in-law Sam now encouraged his brother bud to join him in Newport bud agreed and was hired on as the assistant manager the two brothers have always been close and now Sam was pleased to involved bud in the business Sam always said the bud had good ideas and he valued his opinion so I would say you know he was very fond of his little brother and was I think he he treated bud very well not the bud was always a perfect little angel but I mean growing up I think he he he was a good person to be the older brother bud provided an anchor to Sam's early ambitions giving him practical advice against overextending but neither of them foresaw the disaster that lay ahead the owner of Sam's building envious of Sam's success refused to renew Sam's lease he wanted the location for his son Sam was devastated everybody in Newport just loves Sam and there was really a lot of resentment toward the owner of the building because he wouldn't release the building to Sam I think a lot of people at that point might have said well I've had it with this retail business I'm gonna go to work for Sears or I'm gonna be a car dealer or something he'd say well what did I learn out of this and then get on with it I don't think there's any way he could have failed ultimately and that willingness to learn would be one of the cornerstones of Sam Walton's later success Sam searched the rolling green slopes of the Ozarks for a new location and he found it in a place called Bentonville tiny rural community it hardly looked like the place which would one day call itself home to the largest retail operation in the world when we moved to Northwest Arkansas the economy was not not good at all the square looked like it was an oppression place I worried about coming to this town because it was so small it was smaller than what I'd grown up in only 3,000 and it was hard to find a place to live it was very difficult to find help and I had four little children when we moved up here like most small towns bentonville's daily life centered around the town square and the store Sam bought was a five-and-dime on that square this time he insisted on a 99 year lease in July of 1950 Waltons five-and-dime opened its doors and it changed the face of a sleepy little town square by this time Sam and Helen had four children three boys and one girl and as with many family businesses the Walton children helped out at the store we all worked various times in the local store here in Bentonville and I remember carrying lots and lots of boxes up up the stairway to the stockroom upstairs Sam was socially successful in his new hometown as well he was president of the Bentonville Chamber of Commerce head of a Rotary Club and he served a term as a city councilman indeed Sam Walton was the quintessential small town merchant but he was about to launch a new enterprise that would one day make the small town merchants all but obsolete the tranquil time in America's history than the nineteen fifties the economy was flourishing housing costs were low and America was starting its baby boom across the land people were happily settling down into post-war peace time and Sam Walton was eager to satisfy America's new shopping needs he kept his ear to the ground for new ways to keep prices down and customer traffic up around 1950 he heard about what was then a totally new idea in retail self-service instead of having sales clerks fetched the merchandise customers could pick and choose themselves Sam realized with fewer employees he could charge less he went back to Bentonville and opened the aisles putting goods from candy to clean next to cosmetics within customer reach it was a hit in just one year sales tripled at Waltons five-and-dime now Sam had the money and the incentive he needed to expand his time he chose a bigger market the college town of Fayetteville Arkansas 30 miles south of Bentonville this time he had real competition it was even a store from the original five-and-dime a Woolworths on one side of Fayetteville square the locals didn't expect Sam to last 60 days but the store took off and now Sam was on his way to becoming a chain merchants in just over ten years he acquired sixteen stores throughout Arkansas Missouri and Kansas and by 1960 was one of the largest independent variety store operators in America Sam decided he needed to get around faster than his old station wagon could take him so in the late 1950s he bought a plane that gave him the freedom to visit any store at any time Sam knew nothing about planes but he figured if he could drive a car he could buy a plane he used this thing pretty much like a station wagon he would just go out get in it turn the key and leave there no never any checklist and one time we took off and the door wasn't closed yet and he would swoop down low and say okay you look for the airport and the FAA would come on and tell him to get he wasn't allowed to be that low and he'd just turn off the radio on one of his trips east to check out the competition Sam became intrigued with another new idea called discounting buying items directly from manufacturers and displaying them in large amounts Sam's instinct told him that even lower prices could make him even more money nothing is little in a big business that's one of the things that that make that make Walton in my view relatively similar to other great entrepreneurs in American history he understood that a small percentage of a very large number is and in fact a large number itself he approached a Ben Franklin organization and asked them to consider discounting if they reduced their prices they could bring in larger crowds but at Ben Franklin the executives couldn't see it's Sam's way all they saw was that the profit of twenty to twenty-five percent they made on items they sold retailers would be reduced to half as much I was there the day that Sam came to Ben Franklin management and said that all these big cities are getting these discount stores why can't the small rural markets get the same thing I'll be your guinea pig you know I'll be happy to try it will you franchise me in a discount store and they said no we can't do that wife Helen was apprehensive to the new venture would mean mortgaging virtually everything they owned but Sam was very sure of himself and what he was doing so Helen co-signed the loan she and Sam went in for 95 percent of the investment we had enough we were we were just living very comfortably and I just I didn't want to go in bed again but that wasn't enough for Sam and I knew that when I married him now Walton was in debt up to his neck but at least he could get on with his plan he decided on the no-frills name of Walmart and in July 1962 he leased a store twice the size of his original store in Rogers Arkansas a small town with a competing Ben Franklin store Sam Walton was about to bite the hand that fed him he started stocking it with whatever surplus items he could get hold of from hardware to ladies clothes Walton had no doubt that customers would come in for a bargain but many in the retail industry were not so sure and indeed competitors saw no reason to worry I was with a different firm none of us took it seriously because we thought you'd fail not in that population to support it Sam took me through the store I thought it was probably the worst looking retail store that I had seen and but because I liked the guy immediately so I told him it was the worst store I'd ever seen and that he probably ought to try something different fortunately for Sam he didn't listen to that advice his first Walmart store exceeded even his own expectations it made a million dollars in sales in its first year I couldn't believe that people were running in there like they did after these bargains and everything and the crowds all those cash registers ringing gave Sam an idea for a purchase of his own in 1961 he and Helen bought a controlling interest in the Bank of Bentonville it was a crafty move enabling Sam to lend himself money now Sam reluctantly decided he needed to hire a secretary she soon found that if she was expected to keep Sam organized she was fighting a losing battle one of the duties of my job was chasing down lost briefcases which mr. Walton unfortunately did quite often he would leave them in taxis he would leave them in airplanes he would leave them in airports and sometimes he could give you a clue where to start looking for it and when he laughed at it sometimes this entailed a good half day's work in 1964 he opened the second and third Walmart's he steadily expanded at a rate of about two stores per year and by 1969 he had 18 Walmart's within 300 miles of the first store that year he opened a Walmart in the town he had effectively been run out of 18 years earlier Newport Arkansas although he claimed he didn't go there to seek revenge the store he had lost his lease on lost its customers to Walmart and soon closed its doors Sam was up before dawn and on the road most days pushing to grow his business he later said he wished he had spent more time with his children during those busy days his idea of coming home was to have dinner and come in and sit down and read and read and read it was difficult mm-hmm I tried to make it so that the children wouldn't miss their dad Sam did try to make up for his frequent absence by taking the family on month-long vacations often camping in the Ozark Mountains [Music] one summer they decided to head to the east coast Sam drove their station wagon complete with a canoe on top right into New York City we want to take the children to a Broadway play we had to make a decision would we just go to that play in the clothes River in oh my gosh I'll never forget it the people came in in their first there formals and there were these people from Arkansas Sam Walton may have had a thing or two to learn about fitting in on Broadway but he was about to show the crowd on Wall Street that this country boy could teach them a thing or two about business Arkansas style you're watching Sam Wallace break up gripped the nation and the country recoiled in horror as National Guardsmen killed four student protesters at Kent State few people were paying attention to a little town in Arkansas where Sam Walton was steadily building what would one day be the country's biggest fortune by 1970 he had opened 32 stores his profits were going through the roof also that year he opened a new company headquarters in a run-down building a few blocks from his first dime store in Bentonville still carrying with him the cautious economical ways warned of a childhood in the depression Walton refused to spend money on any kind of creature comforts here he felt it was important to hold costs down one phone worked just fine the first phone system we had with four or five buttons on it to him oh this is all unnecessary Sam had good reason to worry about money though the company was growing fast he was heavily in debt he owed over two million dollars for which he was personally responsible I used to worry about it and I was real worried I I don't know what he'll do you know what we'll do if he doesn't know quit opening stores we've got so much yeah Sam's strategy for controlling debt was to expand he figured he needed several million dollars so on October 1st 1970 Sam Walton did something he felt was a last resort he put the company he had built with family money and labour up for public sale on the stock market Wall Street yawned brokers thought the stocks were overpriced most of the early shares were purchased by people who worked for Walmart and in just a few years those early stockholders would feel as if they had won the lottery but for now Walmart didn't look like a threat to its rival Kmart which was ten times as big as Walmart Sam saw himself as the dark horse he wanted to become the largest retailer in the country and while Kmart and Sears were perhaps not watching Sam closely enough he was watching them very closely indeed Kmart Sears and Woolworths didn't see Sam coming until it was way way way too late he was the stealth retailer I've been into stores of competitors with him where he he would take off his baseball cap and put on sunglasses and just wander into the store so nobody would know who he was and he would see you know a price on something that was lower than his price at his store down the street and he would get on the phone and call down at that store and tell him to lower the price right then to attract the right people to his company Sam offer generous salaries and benefits and adding Walmart's stock to the package made the deal even sweeter but many Walmart sales clerks were part-time and earned little more than minimum wage it was Sam's wife Helen who suggested he make the profit available to all Walmart employees I said Sam you're going to pay that kind of money to new executive offices how do you spread that benefit out among the people don't they deserve a raise too because they're the ones who make it possible and Sam said well now that's not quite truly it takes good leadership to lead people in a situation like this well I said oh I don't care I think I think you're wrong Sam finally listened to his wife and in 1972 Walmart opened its profit sharing plan to all employees given the enormous profits to come those employees could hardly believe their good fortune and when I retired in 1992 I got a check into my Oaks seven hundred and thirty-eight thousand dollars Jenice and if profit-sharing weren't enough to make sam's employees love him he tried to win them over with his down-home image I hope you have a good career with us and it began to use all manner of goofy gags like pep rallies to motivate them I'll be right here if a customer comes within 10 feet of me and reader so have we sang the very Hopi nosov it was one of the things that allowed Walton to come in under everybody's radar I think a lot of people who were sophisticated who are located in big cities couldn't believe that some clown in some town nobody ever heard of doing some cheer that sounded ridiculous could be taken seriously [Applause] he was so damn demanding but it was also so damned inspiring that if you're really inspiring and you're really demanding something's got to happen and it just kept happening [Music] Sam developed an almost cult-like following among his so-called associates never more evident than in the bentonville Sam and Helen Appreciation Day parade and for his part mr. Sam as he was told always returned the affection but have our friends here in our hometown they give us these these expressions this it's just it's just much more than I would ever ever ever have hoped in this lifetime but Sam Walton superstores have been linked to the demise of thousands of smaller merchants across the country and have made him and his style of retailing controversial by 1978 Walton had 295 stores in a 10 state area and would soon be opening stores at the rate of about a hundred a year when Walmart came to town it wasn't long before many smaller shops closed their doors for good protestors began to rail against what they called sprawl Mart lamenting that the birth of Walmart signaled the death of downtown when I opened my store in West Little Rock in 1950 there were 23 independent variety stores and I closed my store 33 years later in 1983 and there were only there was only one other independent variety store left at that time now there was no turning back Walmart had changed the expectations of consumers in 1983 Walmart had sales of nearly four billion dollars and Sam Waltons personal fortune was by then more than 2 billion dollars Sam was 64 in 1982 when he was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia the traditional therapy was surgery but Sam adamantly refused apart from the disease his physical condition was excellent so they decided he was a candidate for an expensive new experimental drug interferon it was a success he got a complete remission and that was fabulous because he was a guinea pig taking the interfering and that's what really was one of the miracles Sam Waltons immense wealth naturally brought in powerful connections in 1982 Democratic candidate Bill Clinton was elected to a second term as governor of Arkansas Walton and Clinton had a long fond association despite the fact that Sam when he allied himself with a party at all voted Republican he said something funny one time to me he said I think we're gonna influence each other and I believe that was the case he was very supportive of work that my husband and I did on behalf of education in Arkansas in 1986 Hillary Clinton was elected as the first woman to serve on Walmart's board of directors she and Sam Walton were a political odd couple but the two found a working partnership he was very open to my thoughts about the role of women and minorities in Walmart and the need to try to do more to bring people of talent who could work hard and make a contribution to the attention of the managers in the company results Sam Walton was not known for his politics he claimed that he did not like to use his influence and he was notorious for keeping political contributions to a minimum nonetheless he was a man accustomed to getting his way and I believe it'll happen I hope so I would say he was like all great businessmen Empire builders he cared very much about politics if it impinge upon his fortune Sam Walton was very much too shrewd politician who knew where the levers of power were how to pull them what influence to wield when to threaten when to cajole when to reward as he did in the case of the Clintons and and other politicians in 1984 Governor Clinton called on Sam Walton to help rescue a failing shirt manufacturing plant in the town of Brinkley Arkansas Brinkley was one of hundreds of plants which unable to compete with the tide of cheap goods from overseas was in danger of closing Walmart was one of many American retailers which sought to maximize profit by buying merchandise manufactured in countries that have abundant cheap labor with a great deal of fanfare Sam responded to Governor Clinton's request by placing a $600,000 order for shirts but Sam Walton had another reason for his Buy America campaign one he was a patriot and thought Americans have jobs and two people had jobs and these little towns they're gonna buy products at his Walmart again the buy American program was kind of a smokescreen opposed of Walmart machine to role as it did because price was the bottom line and if the guy had Taiwan can make it cheaper than the guy in Fort Smith Arkansas he'll go with the guy guy in Taiwan time and time again we were accused of kind of using this as a as a advertising ploy and all the rest of it it was not it at all it was driven by a principle and Sam's principles made Walmart the target of protest again in the early 80s when unions attempted to organize its high-tech distribution plant in Searcy Arkansas union organizers said Walmart paid low wages ignored unsafe working conditions failed to compensate for injuries on the job Sam felt strongly no Walmart had ever been unionized and he didn't want one to start now Sam appeared himself and he told him that if the Union got in that he would take away the profit sharing program he told them that he had like 500 applications for employees to take their place in the in the plant once again Sam got his way the Union was voted down indeed it was a combination of Sam Walton shrewd management and his relentless competitiveness that turned Walmart into a retail empire by 1985 this business savvy made Sam Walton the richest man in the country and a topic of media fascination a tiny town in the northwestern corner of Arkansas it seems a million miles away from the moguls of Wall Street but America's richest man calls it home meet Sam Walton it's but when the camera crews arrived in Bentonville they often found Sam in his old pickup truck and most times his hound dogs were not too far behind one of the things about Walton that made him special was this all shox persona he seemed to be an unsophisticated man this is the greatest merchant of the second half of the 20th century in the United States good no one thank you so much I understand you had a pretty good increase Sam's seemingly casual view of money was never more evident than on Black Monday on that day in 1987 the stock market suddenly plummeted as New York's bridges were being watched for suicides Sam Walton in a matter of hours lost one and a half billion dollars Walton stunned the financial world by shrugging and saying it's paper anyway but then Sam Walton really had no cause for worry even with such a monumental loss he was still by far the richest man in America on promised his family he would take a back seat in the business but relaxing full-time was a foreign concept to him finally in 1988 when Sam was 70 and his retail operation was pulling in almost 16 billion dollars a year he phased himself out of the day-to-day operation he and Helen took time to travel together and on a trip to Central America they decided to do something with their money to counteract what they saw as the long reach of communism the Waltons set up the Latin American scholarship fund to send a hundred and eighty students a year to one of three Christian universities in Arkansas we think they need to learn about the government of the United States that caused it where everybody gets to vote people aren't afraid to vote in 1990 Sam began to experience aches in his bones his doctors diagnosed him with bone cancer a much more aggressive disease than the leukemia he had successfully overcome years before Sam was hopeful as he began an innovating round of chemotherapy and radiation and in spite of the pain and exhaustion he suffered he tried to get on with as much of his routine as he could one bright spot during Sam's illness was that he finally met the goal that seemed so unlikely when he said it for himself years before Walmart soared past Kmart and Sears and in 1991 while Sam was struggling for his life became the nation's largest retailer in 1992 President Bush flew to Walmart's home offices in Bentonville to confer Presidential recognition on Sam Walton for his achievements the Medal of Freedom I salute you sir for your vision and I am proud to give you your nation's highest civilian honor Sam was determined he was gonna get there somehow of course we had to take him in a wheelchair and his clothes own it to get something that looks halfway decent on him was terrible because he had lost so much weight at that point he any any disease any germ that got to it would just leave it be the end he just barely got up there I I helped him a little bit but he was determined but I think Sam realized even at that time that that the end was not far a few days later Sam checked into the University of Arkansas hospital in a Little Rock on April 5th 1992 he died six days after his 74th birthday [Applause] [Music] prove that old-fashioned values and devotion to your roots we're not inconsistent with extraordinary success by international standards the fortune Sam amassed second only to the Sultan of Brunei at the time of his death was dispersed evenly among his four children and his wife Helen although the Walton family has endowed a grant-making foundation it remains to be seen if their philanthropy will become commensurate with their enormous wealth the Waltons like to support smaller organizations close to home such as education and health care charities in the poverty steep Mississippi Delta a Walton family believes that Walmart itself and its prominent example of good old American enterprise is the best way yet can help Americans Sam Waltons unparalleled success in the retail industry defied the wisdom of the experts he was too late they said his ideas were not original enough but whether by luck or by design Sam Walton more than perhaps anyone came to embody the American dream he worked hard he believed in himself he ruthlessly undercut his competitors and he was in the right place at the right time probably the stupidest question that people asked me about him was was he a genius or was he lucky well you know the answer of course is both because nobody looks into building the biggest retailer in the world and amassing a fortune of twenty five billion dollars well he may not have set out to be the richest man in America I think it pleased him very much [Applause] since Sam Waltons death Walmart has found it difficult to maintain a low profile partly because in 1996 the company surpassed General Motors becoming the nation's largest employer Sam Walton's little company has found itself steeped in controversy time and again most recently movie and music companies have had to bow to Walmart's insistence that it will sell only certain versions of some cds and movies with parts the company finds offensive censored in one CD that won't be found at all in Walmart Sheryl Crow in 1996 had an album which contained the lyrics quote watch our children as they kill each other with a gun they bought at the Walmart discount store unquote Walmart of course refused to sell that album the retail giant stopped selling handguns in his stores back in 1994 though it still sell

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Length: 45min 21sec (2721 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 13 2018