'Mr. Sam' lived every minute to the fullest - Sam M. Walton - Buyers & Sellers - Editorial

Discount Store News, April 20, 1992 by Don Longo

The list of Sam Walton's business and professional achievements could fill an encyclopedia. But, the real measure of the man Wal-Mart associates referred to as "Mr. Sam" is found in his spirit and his enthusiasm for life.

It's been said that the heart of creativity is not genius or intellect, but courage. During a retail career that spanned more than a half century, Walton showed the courage to veer away from the tried and true, and to lead when the solution is uncertain and the answers unknown.

The following quote from Ray Bradbury captures better than I can the love that Sam Walton shared with those around him:

"Imagine that you have been dead for a year, 10 years, one hundred years, a thousand years . . .

The grave and night have taken and kept you in that silence and dark which says nothing and so reveals absolutely zero . . .

In the middle of this darkness and being alone . . . let us imagine that God comes to your still soul and lonely body and says:

'I will give you one minute of life. I will restore you to your body and senses for 60 seconds. Out of all the minutes in your life, choose one. I will put you in that minute and you will live again, after a hundred, a thousand years of darkness. Which is it? Think. Speak. Which minute do you choose?'

And your answer is: 'Any minute. Any minute at all. Give me any minute in all my life. When I lived I didn't know that every minute was special, precious, a gift, a miracle, an incredible thing, an impossible work, an amazing dream. But now, like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Morn, with snow in the air and the promise of rebirth given, I know what I should have known in my dumb shambles: that all is a lark, and it is a beauty beyond tears, and also a terror.

'But I dance about. I become a child. I am the boy who runs for the great white bird in the window, and I am the man that sends the boy running for that bird, and I am the life that blows in the snowing wind along the street, and the bells that sound and say live, love, for too soon will your name, which is shaped in snow, melt, or your soul, which is inscribed like a breath of vapor on a cold glass pane, fade.

'Run, run, lad, run, down the middle of Christmas at the center of life!'"

Until the end, Sam Walton ran for the great white bird in the window. Mr. Sam knew what it was like to run down the middle of Christmas at the center of life.