Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot who became a billionaire philanthropist and GOP donor, has died at the age of 95.
“The entire Home Depot family is deeply saddened by the death of our co-founder Bernie Marcus,” the company said. “We owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to Bernie. 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.
Marcus’ death was first reported by CNN.
Born to Russian-Jewish immigrants in 1929, Marcus grew up in Newark, New Jersey, according to a biography shared by Home Depot. He eventually enrolled in pharmacy school and graduated from Rutgers University.
At age 49, Marcus formed Home Depot with Arthur Blank, the Atlanta Falcons owner and a billionaire supporter of Democrats, in Atlanta in 1978 after both were fired from another home improvement firm. They were assisted with financing from Ken Langone, another major philanthropist and Republican donor.
In a statement, Blank said he was “heartbroken at the passing” of his “dearest friend.”
“Today, I’ve lost a father-figure, mentor, brother and business and life partner,” Blank said. “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.”
In 1981, Home Depot was listed on the NASDAQ exchange for $12 a share. Today, the company’s shares are worth $395, equating to a market cap of about $392 billion. Home Depot now employs almost half a million workers.
Marcus served as CEO for about the first two decades of the company, and as chairman until he retired in 2002. According to Forbes, Marcus had a net worth of about $11 billion at the time of his death.
Thanks to that fortune, Marcus became a prolific philanthropist. Through a foundation he created, he gave 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 donated $250 million to help build the Georgia Aquarium, among the largest in the world.
In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Marcus initially donated to a political action committee that supported candidates such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. He eventually threw his support behind Donald Trump, writing in an online op-ed that his experience turning Home Depot into a multibillion-dollar business meant he could not support the policies being advocated by Hillary Clinton.
In 2023, Marcus endorsed Trump again. In an other online op-ed, he said that while he had been “frustrated” at times by Trump’s behavior, “we cannot let his brash style be the reason we walk away from his otherwise excellent stewardship of the United States during his first term in office.”
“Now is the time for unity to save The American Dream for future generations,” he wrote.