Sam Walton

made a difference for me, it would be a passion to compete. That passion has pretty much kept me on the go, looking ahead to the next store visit, or the next store opening, or the next merchandising item I personally wanted to promote out in those stores, like a minnow bucket, or a thermos bottle, or a mattress pad, or a big bag of candy. As I do look back, though, I realize that ours is a story about the kinds of traditional principles that made America great in the first place. It is a story about entrepreneurship, and risk, and hard work, and knowing where you want to go, and being willing to do what it takes to get there. It's a story about believing in your idea, even when maybe some other folks don't, and about sticking to your guns. But I think more than anything, it proves there's absolutely no limit to what plain, ordinary working people can accomplish if they're given the opportunity, and the encouragement, and the incentive to do their best. Because that's how Walmart became Walmart. Ordinary people joined together to accomplish extraordinary things. At first, we amazed ourselves. And before too long, we amazed everybody else, especially folks who thought America was just too complicated and sophisticated a place for this sort of thing to work anymore. The Walmart story is unique. Nothing quite like it has been done before. So maybe by telling it the way it really happened, we can help some other folks down the line take these same principles, and apply them to their dreams, and make them come true. Chapter 1, Learning to Value a Dollar. A quote from Helen Williams, former history and speech teacher at Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri. I was awake one night, and turned on my radio, and I heard them announce that Sam Walton was the richest man in America. And I thought, Sam Walton? Why, he was in my book. And I thought, Sam Walton was the richest man in America. He was in my class. And I got so excited. Success has always had its price, I guess. And I learned that lesson the hard way in October of 1985, when Forbes magazine named me the so-called richest man in America. Well, it wasn't too hard to imagine all those newspaper and TV folks up in New York saying, who? And he lives where? The next thing we knew, reporters and photographers started flocking down here to Bentonville, I guess to take pictures of me diving into some swimming pool full of money they imagined I had, or to watch me light big fat cigars with $100 bills while the Hoochie Coochie girls danced by the lake. I really don't know what they thought, but I wasn't about to cooperate with them. So they found out all these exciting things about me, like I drove an old pickup truck with cages in the back for my bird dogs, or I wore a Walmart ball cap, or I got my hair cut at the barbershop just off the town square. Somebody with a telephoto lens even snuck up and took a picture of me in the barber chair. And it was in newspapers all over the country. Then folks we'd never heard of started calling us and writing us from all over the world and coming here to ask us for money. Many of them represented worthy causes, I'm sure. But we also heard from just about every harebrained cockamamie schemer in the world. I remember one letter from a woman who just came right out and said, I've never been able to afford the $100,000 house I've always wanted. Will you give me the money? They still do it to this day. Write or call asking for a new car, or money to go on a vacation, or to get some dental work, whatever comes into their minds. Now, I'm a friendly fellow by nature. I always speak to folks in the street and such. And my wife, Helen, is as genial and outgoing as she can be. Involved in all sorts of community activities, and we've always lived very much out in the open. But we really thought there for a while that this richest thing was going to ruin our whole lifestyle. We've always tried to do our share, but all of a sudden, everybody expected us to pay their way, too. And nosy people from the media would call our house at all hours and get downright rude when we'd tell them, no, you can't bring a TV crew out to the house. Or no, we don't want your magazine to spend a week photographing the lives of the Waltons. Or no, I don't have time to share.