Perot, Ross, 1930-2019

Henry Ross Perot; born Henry Ray Perot, June 27, 1930, Texarkana, Texas, U.S.; died July 9, 2019 (aged 89), Dallas, Texas, U.S.; One of Perot's childhood friends was Hayes McClerkin, who later became the Speaker of the Arkansas House of Representatives and a prominent lawyer in Texarkana, Arkansas; Perot joined the Boy Scouts of America and made Eagle Scout in 1942, after 13 months in the program. He was a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award; From 1947 to 1949, he attended Texarkana Junior College, then entered the United States Naval Academy in 1949; Perot said his appointment notice to the academy—sent by telegram—was sent by W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, Texas's 34th governor and former senator. Perot married Margot Birmingham of Greensburg, Pennsylvania in 1956; After he left the Navy in 1957, Perot became a salesman for IBM; He left IBM in 1962 to found Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in Dallas, Texas; EDS went public in 1968, and the stock price rose from $16 a share to $160 within days. Fortune called Perot the "fastest, richest Texan" in a 1968 cover story. In 1984, General Motors bought a controlling interest in EDS for $2.4 billion; In 1984, Perot's Perot Foundation bought a very early copy of Magna Carta, one of only a few to leave the United Kingdom. The foundation lent it to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. where it was displayed alongside the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. In 2007, the foundation sold it to David Rubenstein, managing director of The Carlyle Group for 21.3 million dollars to be used "for medical research, for improving public education and for assisting wounded soldiers and their families." It remains on display at the National Archives; In 1988, he founded Perot Systems in Plano, Texas. His son, Ross Perot, Jr., eventually succeeded him as CEO. In September 2009, Perot Systems was acquired by Dell for $3.9 billion; After a visit to Laos in 1969, made at the request of the White House,[12] in which he met with senior North Vietnamese officials, Perot became heavily involved in the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue; On February 20, 1992, Perot appeared on CNN's Larry King Live and announced his intention to run as an independent if his supporters could get his name on the ballot in all 50 states. With such declared policies as balancing the federal budget, opposition to gun control, ending the outsourcing of jobs and enacting electronic direct democracy via "electronic town halls," he became a potential candidate and soon polled roughly even with the two major-party candidates; n the 1992 election, he received 18.9% of the popular vote, about 19,741,065 votes, but no electoral college votes, making him the most successful third-party presidential candidate in terms of the popular vote since Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election; In 1995, he founded the Reform Party and won their presidential nomination for the 1996 United States presidential election. His vice presidential running mate was Pat Choate; Perot and his wife Margot (née Birmingham), a graduate of Goucher College, had five children (Ross Jr., Nancy, Suzanne, Carolyn, and Katherine).[7] He left 19 grandchildren. With an estimated net worth of about US$4.1 billion in 2019, he was ranked by Forbes as the 167th-richest person in the United States; Perot died on July 9, 2019, less than two weeks after his 89th birthday in Dallas, Texas, from leukemia