First and foremost, Sam Walton was always a winner. This is an important consideration because many successful individuals do not demonstrate leadership or achieve success early in life. Mr. Walton – or Mr. Sam as his associates knew him – was born Samuel Moore Walton on March 29^th, 1918.

By the age of 13, Sam had attained the status of Eagle Scout, a remarkable achievement. Many other successful people have become Eagle Scouts before going on to great success. Sam continued on to become a student leader, basketball star and state championship quarterback at Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri. In preparation for his future in retailing, Walton graduated from the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1940 with an economics degree. He joined the army and served for three years, beginning in 1942, as a captain in the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps.

Sam and his fiancée, Helen Robson, were married on February 14, 1943. Their marriage produced four children: Rob, Jim, John and Alice.

In the years after the war, Walton worked with J.C. Penny. Armed with this experience in retail he later opened his own variety store in Newport, Arkansas, which led to the development of the highly successful Walton’s Five and Dime store in Bentonville.

Mr. Sam, at the age of 44, developed a new concept in grocery and non-foods retailing that were designed to make American-made goods available at inexpensive prices to everybody. The store opened in 1962 in Rodgers. Arkansas and the new retailing formula was an immediate and smashing success. In fact, Walmart soon had the supermarket industry scrambling to develop new concepts in an attempt to successfully compete. It is fair to say on that day in 1962, Mr. Sam fired the first shot in the revolution to develop new and better supermarket concepts that continues to this day.