John Walton, pictured, one of the billionaire children of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and a member of the company’s board of directors, died yesterday when a small aircraft he was piloting crashed near his home in Wyoming.
Mr Walton, an experienced pilot, was the only person on board the small, experimental aircraft when it crashed soon after take-off from Jackson Hole airport. The home-made craft, which was made of aluminium with fabric-covered wings, came down in scrubland in Grand Teton National Park at around 12:20pm local time.
Mr Walton, who was 58 and a leading member of America’s richest family, was pronounced dead at the scene.
“We’re sad that John Walton, who was well-known and much-loved in this valley, died doing something that he loved to do, which was fly aircraft,” said Joan Anzelmo, a spokeswoman for Grand Teton National Park..
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“I saw parts of it,” she said. “I didn’t realise what I was seeing at first. It was so lightweight it looked like a giant model airplane.”
Ms Anzelmo said that the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board had been notified of the crash, but because Mr Walton was flying an unregistered, homemade aircraft, there would be no formal investigation.
According to the most recent Forbes Rich List published in March, Mr Walton was the 11th richest man in the world, with an inherited fortune of $18.2 billion. His brother, Robson, the chairman of Wal-Mart, is the tenth richest, and his other brother, sister and mother, occupy the places directly below them.
The Walton family owns 40 per cent of Wal-Mart, which is the world’s biggest retailer, with over 5,000 superstores around the world and $285 billion of sales last year. The company was founded by Walton’s father, Sam Walton, when he opened a discount store in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962. The company went public in 1970.
John Walton joined the board of Wal-Mart Stores Inc in 1992 and served on the company’s strategic planning and finance committees. In the 1970s and 1980s, he pursued other business ventures, including crop dusting and boat building.
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More recently he devoted his time to the Walton Family Foundation, the family’s philanthropic institution, and formed a holding company, True North, to run his various business interests. Passionate about improving America’a schools, he oversaw the donation of more than $700 million to education-related causes between 1998 and 2004.
Mr Walton graduated from the College of Wooster, Ohio, and served as a medic with the Green Berets during the Vietnam War. He was awarded the Silver Star for saving the lives of several members of his unit while under enemy fire, according to the company.
Sam Walton wrote of his son in his autobiography, Sam Walton: Made in America: “He’s the most independent of the bunch and the only one who doesn’t live here in Arkansas, and he’s a tremendous individual.”
Mr Walton is survived by his wife and son, his mother, Helen, his two brothers, Robson and Jim, and his sister, Alice.