Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus reflects on a life of helping others

Bernard "Bernie" Marcus, co-founder of the world's largest home improvement retailer, was dedicated to more than just his day job. 

Even in the midst of trying to build The Home Depot into a company with a current market cap of more than $288 billion, Marcus became a pillar of philanthropy as he created institutions and invested in programs that sought to better the lives of people all over the world. 

Marcus told FOX Business that he was driven by the need to "look for solutions where there are no solutions," whether it was helping veterans combat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injuries (TBI), creating one of the largest autism centers in the U.S, or helping a doctor pioneer critical bone marrow transplant research. 

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"Miracles never stop," Marcus said. FOX Business caught up with him in the midst of promoting his new book, a business memoir entitled "Kick Up Some Dust: Lessons on Thinking Big, Giving Back, and Doing It Yourself."

"I'm 93, and I'm not stopping… unless the good Lord strikes me down."

Poor as church mice

Marcus, the youngest of four children, was born to Russian immigrants who came to America in search of a better life and settled in a four-floor walk-up tenement in Newark, New Jersey. His family was "poor as church mice" and by the time Marcus was 11 years old, he started working just to afford the very clothes on his back, he recalled. By 15, he had held more than a dozen jobs and even joined a gang just to survive. 

"It was not the easiest place in the world. But the truth of the matter is, we had each other," he said. "We survived… my mother said, ‘This is the golden lamp. You could do anything you want here. America is great.'"

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No matter how tough things were for the family, his mother instilled in them how important it was to help others who were struggling. 

At the end of each day, she would have the family put their extra coins into a little blue box to send off "to help those people that can't take care of themselves."

"She would actually take money away from us," he said with a laugh. 

It was a lesson that shaped his life, and when opportunities arose to help other people, Marcus took it. 

Savings lives

In the 1970s, while running New Jersey-based home improvement store Handy Dan, an employee told Marcus that he was given six weeks left to live and needed to say his goodbyes. Without hesitation, Marcus said he called the president of City of Hope, an organization known for conducting clinical trials through its involvement in the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, to take him on as a candidate. They treated him, and he went on to live a long life, Marcus recalled. 

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"He was a human being. He had two children… It hit me viscerally how important this was, saving a life," Marcus said. "I didn't do it. They did it. But I was able to get him to the right place at the right time."

For the next three decades, Marcus supported the City of Hope and when a doctor needed money to pioneer bone marrow transplants, he helped the charity's board raise the funds needed and even forked over $5,000 that he barely had, he said. That medical advancement eventually became a major part of treating certain cancers around the world, Marcus told FOX Business. 

"If you run a business, it's always fascinating to wait for the quarterly reports, the annual reports," he said, but "there's nothing like the report that you get saving a human life." 

In the 90s, while trying to find locations for The Home Depot, he scoured the nation for a medical facility to help his accountant's son who "screamed incessantly." At the time, very few people knew about autism, he recalled. 

Charitable foundations

So, he created The Marcus Autism Center in 1991, in Atlanta, Georgia. The center offers families access to the latest research, comprehensive testing and science-based treatments for kids with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Knowing how little people knew about ASD, Marcus also created the advocacy organization Autism Speaks to start raising awareness about the developmental disability.

For years, he has worked with and helped develop a number of organizations including The Marcus Institute for Brain Health (MIBH) in Aurora, Colorado, which evaluates and treats veterans with symptoms relating to a mild/moderate traumatic brain injury along with associated psychological health conditions. 

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He is also involved with the Gary Sinise Foundation Avalon Network, which is the first comprehensive traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress network for veterans, service members and first responders nationwide free of charge. 

"The treatment that we give, these people can go back to a normal life … that's kicking up dust," Marcus said. "Who in their right mind would start something like that? You got to be a little crazy. And I have been accused of being a little nuts." 

"I'll take it," he said with a chuckle.