Bernie Marcus at 93 is Still Kicking Up Dust

Bernie Marcus describes his new book, which debuts at The Book Festival of the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta (MJCCA) on Nov. 6 as, “Trying to convince people that they can kick up some dust; that they can make a difference.”

Marcus, who is 93, and the co-founder of The Home Depot, has taken that theme of creating change as the book’s title, “Kick Up Some Dust.”

It was written with Catherine Lewis, a history professor at Kennesaw State University. The book is subtitled, “Lessons on Thinking, Giving Back and Doing It Yourself,” which is a good way of describing how Marcus helped build the company into the world’s largest home improvement corporation with revenues last year of over $155 billion.

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In the 20 years since his retirement from the company, he has devoted himself to giving away over $2 billion of his personal fortune. Despite his generosity, he’s still worth, according to Forbes Magazine, over $9 billion.

When speaking recently in a wide-ranging interview, Marcus gave credit for the lessons he learned from his mother, Sarah Shinofsky Marcus, a poor Russian immigrant. She was, he emphasized, the most important influence in his life. It was she who inspired his desire to be what he describes in his book as “a positive force in the world.”

Bernie Marcus describes his new book, which debuts at The Book Festival of the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta (MJCCA) on Nov. 6 as, “Trying to convince people that they can kick up some dust; that they can make a difference.”

“My mother believed that education was important, and she believed that you could achieve in this country whatever you wanted to be. She believed in America. She loved America. The day she got her citizenship, she cried like a baby. And it was the proudest moment of her life to become a citizen of the United States. And she taught me to love this country and to take advantage of all the benefits that this country offered me.”

Marcus was born on Mother’s Day in 1929, five months before the stock market crash on Wall Street brought on the Great Depression that he lived through as a young boy. Still, despite the hardship of that time, he credits her influence for helping him develop the drive and desire to succeed that shaped so much of his life. It is what he describes in his book as the initiative to “do it yourself” that led him to create the Home Depot, soon after he, Arthur Blank and Ron Brill were fired from the Handy Dan Home Improvement Company in Southern California in 1978.

“My mother instilled in me that you could do it, you can make it happen. And it was on me. It was on what I could do, not what the government could do. And I believed in that truly and followed her all these years. So, she is really the inspiration that has carried me all these years and still does.”

My mother instilled in me that you could do it, you can make it happen. And it was on me. It was on what I could do, not what the government could do. And I believed in that truly and followed her all these years. So, she is really the inspiration that has carried me all these years and still does.

He believes that the Jewish instinct to succeed has developed to confront the adversity we have faced over the centuries. Marcus believes that the challenges we have had to overcome have shaped us, fundamentally, in ways that have helped us to change society and to change history.

“I think it’s genetic in many ways. Over the years, 2,000 years, Jews have been oppressed in every society that we have belonged to…and Jews were able to, through their wits, through their intelligence, through their brightness to succeed in almost every single instance, no matter what civilization it was. Even in Germany in the thirties, the Jews have achieved a great deal. They just didn’t know how to use the power that they had. But I think it’s some kind of a genetic [basis] that has helped us to grow and to survive, how to survive intelligently and move forward and do some great things.”

Marcus’ philanthropy has helped reshape the health care system in Atlanta, with large gifts to Grady Memorial Hospital, Piedmont Hospital, the Shepard Center, and the Marcus Autism Center. He has helped to give veterans new hope and a confidence to move ahead with their lives through the Gary Sinise Foundation Avalon Network, which treats post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries.

In Israel, he has established the Israel Democracy Institute, been a major supporter of Taglit-Birthright Israel, and developed Root One at The Jewish Education Project to help prepare Jewish teenagers to be advocates for Israel when they begin college. But in doing all this, Marcus has never forgotten how much of a struggle it has been to get to where he has.

“I basically spent most of my life looking ahead and trying to plan ahead. But in contemplating what happened in my life, I never realized how much antisemitism I grew up in. I couldn’t get into medical school because I was Jewish, and they had a quota system, but here we are again. The same anti-Israel, antisemitic propaganda is promulgated in the United States. Many Jews are absolutely, totally naive on this subject. They don’t realize what is happening. They don’t understand that it’s happening right around them. It’s going to affect their grandchildren and many of them are not willing to fight back. But that doesn’t stand for what I do. I’m going to fight until the day I die.”