He may not be a household name, but I bet something in your household is because of him.
Born in 1929, he grew up in a Newark, NJ tenement with his 3 siblings and parents that emigrated from Russia right before the onset of the Great Depression. Despite the modest upbringing, he wanted to be a doctor and was accepted at Harvard Medical School. He couldn’t afford it because at that time extra tuition was tagged on for Jewish students, so he settled on a Rutgers pharmacy degree. While in college he worked summers as a Borscht Belt stand up comic, where he developed into a natural salesman, and he fell in love with retailing. After a number of jobs he landed as CEO of a hardware chain named Handy Dan. But in 1978 he and his #2, Arthur Blank, were fired in an internal power struggle, and Bernie was jobless for the first time in his life. But he had an idea, why go to one store to buy your hammer and another store for cement and plywood, a one stop hardware super store so to speak. He went to financier friend Ken Langone, also from hardscrabble upbringing, spoke about the idea and then asked for a job. Ken allegedly said, “You just got kicked in the ass with a golden horseshoe”, decided to back the idea, The Home Depot was born and has grown into a 2,300 store goliath with over 500,000 employees and a $400 billion market value. Handy Dan went out of business 30 years ago.
Along the way, Bernie amassed a $6 billion fortune and became a prolific philanthropist donating millions to the causes dear to him, as well as backing politicians he felt were the best for the future of America, Donald Trump was one of those people. They both shared the belief that a free market economy was best for the country.
Bernie’s illustrious life came to an end at 95, a great American story, and a great American.
