A co-founder of Home Depot and well-known philanthropist, Bernie Marcus provided generous support to the Georgia Aquarium, the Marcus Jewish Community Center, and numerous health science institutions.
Originally from New Jersey, Bernard Marcus was born in 1929 and raised in Newark. His parents, recent Jewish immigrants from Russia, had little money, and the family lived in a poor section of the city. Marcus went to work at the age of thirteen, balancing a job and school. He wanted to become a doctor and enrolled at Rutgers University in New Jersey after finishing high school. Although he was a good student, his hopes of attending Harvard Medical School were soon dashed when, in his second year at Rutgers, he was told that because he was Jewish he would have to bribe a medical school administrator in order to gain admission. Lacking the requested $10,000, Marcus settled on becoming a pharmacist and graduated from Rutgers in 1954.
Marcus worked only briefly as a pharmacist; within a few years of completing college he had entered retail sales. For the next several decades he moved up the corporate ladder, working for a string of retail stores and manufacturing companies like Two Guys and Odell. By the mid-1970s Marcus was employed as an executive at Handy Dan Home Improvement Centers, a Los Angeles–based company with several dozen stores in the West. Arthur Blank, Marcus’s future business partner, also worked at Handy Dan as its chief financial officer.
In April 1978 Marcus and Blank were abruptly fired from Handy Dan’s. A friend and business associate, Ken Langone, convinced Marcus that it was the right time to open his own business. Several years earlier, Marcus had shared with Langone his idea for a national chain of warehouse-sized home improvement centers, and now unemployed, Marcus concurred that the time was right to bring his concept into being. Blank agreed to serve as Marcus’s partner, and after conducting a nationwide search for a suitable city in which to open their first stores, the two men decided on Atlanta. The first two Home Depot stores opened for business on June 22, 1979. The business proved successful, and within two years the company went public. Marcus and Blank embarked on an aggressive expansion program that also proved very successful. By 2024 Home Depot operated more than 2,300 stores throughout North America and recorded annual revenues in excess of $150 million.
Home Depot’s runaway success made Marcus a wealthy man—Forbes estimated that his wealth exceeded $10 billion at the time of his death—and he spent his later years giving generously to causes close to his heart. Expressing pride in his Jewish heritage, he founded in 1991 the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), a nonpartisan think tank in Israel dedicated to promoting and defending democracy in that country. Marcus’s enthusiasm for Jewish causes motivated former Secretary of State George Schultz to become involved with the IDI, and together they created the sole consulting think tank for the Israeli army.
Marcus became involved in children’s health issues after an experience he had with a Home Depot employee and her sick child. In 1991 he founded the Marcus Institute (later the Marcus Autism Center, after a merger with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta), which provides treatment to children suffering from autism and related disorders. He also contributed to other health-related issues, especially across Atlanta. In 2002 Marcus gave $3.9 million to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the creation of an emergency anthrax response center. Marcus and his wife, Billi, donated $50 million in 2011 to establish the Marcus Trauma Center at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, as well as the Marcus Stroke and Neuroscience Center. In 2012 the foundation gave $20 million to establish the Marcus Heart Valve Center at Piedmont Hospital also in the capital city. And in 2016 the couple donated over $15 million for the establishment of the Marcus Center for Therapeutic Cell Characterization and Manufacturing (MC3M) at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech).
In 2002, after retiring from active participation at Home Depot, Marcus embarked on his next philanthropic undertaking, the Georgia Aquarium. Marcus donated $250 million from his personal fortune to fund the project, which he considered his “thank you” to Georgia and its residents for helping him achieve his success. The facility opened in November 2005 and is one of the largest aquariums in the world. In addition to attracting visitors to downtown Atlanta, the Georgia Aquarium offers educational programs that meet the curriculum guidelines for Georgia schools and engages in international conservation research. In 2009 Marcus was inducted as a Georgia Trustee, an honor conferred by the Georgia Historical Society and the Office of the Governor.
A devout Republican, Marcus was a known mega-donor to the party, supporting conservative candidates and causes for over forty years. He was especially supportive of the rise of President Donald J. Trump, contributing $7 million to Trump’s campaign in 2016. In 2020 the Marcuses contributed nearly $25 million to Republican campaigns, making them the seventh-largest donors that election cycle. Marcus’s support of Trump during the 2020 election led to calls among progressives to boycott Home Depot, which prompted the retailer to distance itself from its billionaire co-founder. Marcus was further criticized during the COVID-19 pandemic for his relationship to one of his non-profits, Jobs Creators Network (founded in 2010 as Job Creators Alliance), which endorsed the production and use of hydroxychloroquine, an unproven treatment of COVID-19, to fight the disease.
In 2010 the Marcuses committed to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s charitable campaign, The Giving Pledge, promising to give away 90 percent of their wealth. Bernie Marcus died on November 4, 2024 at his home in Boca Raton, Florida at the age of 95. Upon his death, the distribution of his remaining wealth was tasked to his foundation, which was given a twenty-year deadline to distribute funds to Jewish causes, child wellbeing, medical research, free enterprise, and community projects.
