Thank You to Bernie Marcus for Making the World Safer

Bernie Marcus, who passed away last week, played a large role in the CDC Foundation and in the presence of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta as a base to help protect people in the United States and across the globe.

Most people knew Marcus as the founder and former CEO and chairman of Home Depot, one of the world’s largest companies, as well as a philanthropist, who invested deeply in causes that fostered healthier, more resilient communities.

What may be less known is the critical role he played as a CDC Foundation board member, serving as chairman of our board of directors in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Marcus’s commitment to public health and his belief in the power of collaboration helped lay the foundation for the impactful work the CDC Foundation continues to do today.

Former CDC Foundation President and CEO Charlie Stokes recalled Marcus’s service and support of CDC and the Foundation. “Bernie, like so many business leaders who joined the CDC Foundation’s board of directors, immediately came to realize CDC’s critical importance in safeguarding the nation’s health and its workforce. His strong and active support for CDC will long be remembered and deeply appreciated.”

Marcus was an early and essential supporter of emergency preparedness and response at CDC. Before 2001, CDC had no central nerve center to coordinate responses to large-scale public health disasters. He set about to change that.

After the first confirmed case of anthrax in 2001, he provided nearly $4 million through the Marcus Foundation to the CDC Foundation to equip a state-of-the-art emergency response center at CDC. In announcing the pledge, he called on other organizations and individuals to partner with CDC to improve national emergency preparedness, and other organizations did step forward with both financial and in-kind donations for CDC’s first formal emergency operations center.

Marcus took on an even greater challenge in support of CDC and our nation’s public health system following this initial work. In the early 2000s, CDC’s campuses in Atlanta, which had been overlooked for years, were in dire need of investment from the federal government. Marcus worked with several other Atlanta-based CEOs—Kent “Oz” Nelson, former CEO and Chairman of UPS, and Phil Jacobs, president and CEO of BellSouth’s Georgia Operations— to work with congress to ensure additional funding for CDC’s Atlanta campuses.

In recounting the story to the Atlanta Jewish Times in 2020, Jacobs said “I have pictures of tarps on the ceiling that are holding water out over these million-dollar pieces of equipment. There was one story of a woman who was an employee of the CDC who went into the ladies’ room and fell through the floor because of all the rotted wood.”

Together, the efforts of Marcus, Nelson and Jacobs helped to jump-start what are now CDC’s world-class facilities in Atlanta, replacing buildings and labs that were dilapidated and inadequate to meet the needs of the world’s premier public health agency.

“Long story, short,” based on Jacobs recollection to the Atlanta Jewish Times, “We were able to get Congress to increase the budgetary appropriations so that over an eight-year period we got an additional $1.6 billion,” which allowed CDC in phases to transform their Atlanta campuses.

When Marcus was asked why he took on all of these incredible efforts, he replied: “I have met individuals (at CDC) who have literally risked their lives to vaccinate children against polio in war-torn countries. Others travel to far regions of the world to find the cause of a mysterious killer. Each of these brave efforts helps ensure a safer environment for my family—for all our families.”

Of course, I’m only recounting what Marcus did with the CDC Foundation. His generosity and commitment to making the world a better place extended far beyond his work with the CDC Foundation.

With his passing, the world has lost a visionary businessman, philanthropist and human being. Thank you, Bernie Marcus, for your work to save and improve lives in America and across the world—you will not be forgotten. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends and colleagues. His impact lives on, not only through his contributions to business and philanthropy but also in the hearts of those he inspired.