Helen Walton
Helen Robson Walton ( born December 3, 1919 in Claremore, Oklahoma, † April 19, 2007 in Bentonville, Arkansas) was the wife of Wal- Mart founder Sam Walton.
Biography
Her parents L.S. and Hazel Carr Robson brought them up in the traditional values of a small town community: a Protestant work ethic, honesty and willingness to charitable donations ( "giving back to the community" ). She studied finance at the University of Oklahoma. In 1942, she met Sam Walton and married him on Valentine's Day 1943. According to her husband's return from the second world war, the couple moved in 1945 to Newport, Arkansas, where they opened a Ben Franklin "five - and-dime " store. Five years later they moved to Bentonville, the future headquarters where Sam Walton continued his rise as a wholesale merchant. Her husband described it as one of his best business consultant, he has ever had, and he confessed to her, the original idea of the profit-sharing plan of Wal -Mart, who admitted all participants an additional opportunity of profit sharing in addition to the shares.
Helen Walton was active in philanthropic ways, in particular in the field of education, the arts, and for sozialkaritative purposes in Arkansas. For example, they gave $ 300 million, the largest ever single donation to a public university in the U.S.., 2002, the University of Arkansas As an avowed Presbyterian they also supported the Presbyterian Church.
In 2005, she was ranked at # 29 out of the richest people in the world by Forbes Magazine. Their property was estimated at 16.4 billion U.S. dollars.
She had four children, the available a fortune even higher (ed):
- Samuel Robson Walton ( b. 1944 )
- John T. Walton (* 1946, † 2005)
- James Carr Walton ( born 1948 )
- Alice L. Walton ( b. 1949 )