With a net worth of $3.5 billion, Bernie Marcus, founder of Home Depot, has the credentials to promote self-reliance and faith. He is also a generous and focused philanthropist.
His contributions have not gone unnoticed. He is a recent recipient of the William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership which honors the ideals and principles that guided Simon’s giving. That includes the key values of personal responsibility, resourcefulness, volunteerism, scholarship, individual freedom, faith in God, and helping people to help themselves.
There have been many beneficiaries of his generosity, but his focus on helping wounded veterans suffering from severe physical and psychic wounds is especially noteworthy.
Marcus first appeared on the nation’s A-list of entrepreneurs when he and his partners opened the first Home Depot in June 1979. It grew from a single store to one of the most spectacular commercial successes in recent history.
Marcus was a philanthropist long before he was an entrepreneur. “My mother,” he once wrote, “used to take ice cream money away from my brothers and sister and me—often against our will—and give it to charities. Her sincere belief was, ‘The more you give, the more you get.’ How right she was.”
Over the years, his giving has taken many forms; Marcus was the driving force behind the creation of the Georgia Aquarium—the largest in the world. He led the creation of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan, Jerusalem-based think tank.
With a focus on children’s health and military veterans, he has long supported medical research and has made major contributions in the areas of autism and neurological, spinal, and brain injury.
Recently, Marcus, a vigorous octogenarian, appeared on Neil Cavuto’s afternoon show on the Fox network to promote his support for veterans.
Shepherd Center
What triggered his support, he explained, was a tour of the Shepherd Center, a nationally prominent rehabilitation hospital in Atlanta where he met a young soldier with a spinal-cord injury and a traumatic brain injury. (For details click on Shepherd.org/patient-programs)
The veteran, Marcus said, had been given a prognosis of paralysis from the waist down for the rest of his life and had been waiting months for the military to process his paperwork and discharge him to V.A. care.
Appalled by the neglect, Marcus put the heat on, and, with his urging, Shepherd created what they called their SHARE initiative for wounded veterans.
SHARE participants undergo a two-week assessment of their symptoms and functional limitations led by a team of neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, speech pathologists and physical therapists. The team then produces a set of treatment recommendations.
After that, the patient undergoes 8 to 12 weeks of intensive therapy. In addition to their medical treatments, participants work with recreational therapists, social workers and vocational rehabilitative experts. The goal is improved daily functioning leading to independence.
After veterans return home, a Share case manager orchestrates 12 to 14 months of follow up. If more treatment is needed, the patient returns to the Shepherd Center.
As an example of the 300 or so lives that SHARE has changed, Marcus cites a soldier injured by a blast in Iraq. She returned home to a child, but needed a caretaker even to attend to her own needs. Her husband got frustrated and left her before she came to SHARE as a last-ditch option.
By the time she had completed the program she was able to hold a job, live without a caretaker, and regain custody.
Though it doesn’t charge veterans or service members anything, the SHARE program is financially stable. It began to operate on a budget of about $1.2 million per year, but Marcus is aiming much higher.
“I want us to make SHARE a nationwide network, and really extend it. Go big.”
Center of Excellence
The National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE) is a Department of Defense Organization working to advance the clinical care, diagnosis research and education of military service members with traumatic brain injuries and psychological health conditions.
Enter Jim Kelly, the founding director of NICoE, the medical facility launched by philanthropist Arnold Fisher to provide brain-injury treatment through the Department of Defense. Kelly had been treating brain injury among accident victims, professional athletes, and veterans for decades.
Together, SHARE and Kelly started working on a plan to build a preeminent brain-injury clinic. It would be located on the Anschutz Campus of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Kelly’s home teaching institution. And it would offer the best concussion care for a thousand miles in any direction.
The network aims to serve around 2,000 veterans per year. A research organization has joined the alliance to manage and share the reams of data
the clinics will produce. It’s called OneMind, and is run, with philanthropic support, by Pete Chiarelli, former vice chief of staff of the Army.
OneMind is a non-profit company dedicated to benefiting all affected by brain illness and injury through improved diagnostics, treatment and cures while eliminating the stigma that comes with mental illness.
Satisfied with this ambitious proposal, Bernie Marcus signed off on a grant to launch Jim Kelly’s clinic at the University of Colorado, a commitment of over $30 million, in addition to a sizable promise to integrate other medical facilities into the network.
At the same time, Marcus invested $3.8 million to purchase a building that will allow SHARE to double its annual capacity to 100 patients, as its contribution to this burgeoning network.
Custom homes
A substantial portion of Bernie Marcus’s giving focuses on a small but vitally needy and deserving population of veterans. In particular, he
has committed $8.5 million to build 27 custom smart homes for some of our most severely wounded service members and their families.
He works with two charities—the Gary Sinise Foundation, and the Stephen Siller Tunnel-to-Towers Foundation—that have particular specialties in this niche.
The Sinise and Siller organizations are are aimed at “the very severely wounded population—triple amputees, victims burned over 80 percent of their bodies, those with severe brain injuries who will need full-time caretakers for the rest of their lives.
The first home that Siller built was for the first quadruple amputee to ever survive a war. He happened to be from Staten Island, New York, near where the foundation is based, and so they built his home. That’s how they got started.”
Leave a Reply