Helen Walton was buried in a private ceremony next to her husband Sam in Bentonville Cemetery, which is next to Wal-Mart’s headquarters. Sam Walton died in 1992 at the age of 74.
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Sam Walton married Helen in her hometown of Claremore, Oklahoma, on Valentine’s Day 1943, after spending a year of active duty in the Army.
According to Sam Walton’s book “Sam Walton: Made in America,” on an April night in a bowling alley in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he observed Helen Robson his future bride who happened to be on a date with another fellow.
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Helen and Sam both stated that they fell in love right away. Helen, according to Sam, was “beautiful and brilliant and educated, ambitious and opinionated and strong-willed with her ideas and goals.”
Sam and Helen Walton started their first retail store, a Ben Franklin “five and dime,” in Newport, Arkansas, in September 1945. They relocated to Bentonville, Arkansas, in 1950, and founded the first Wal-Mart in 1962.
When Sam Walton died in 1992, Helen and their four children inherited Wal-Mart.


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