Sylvan Goldman

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Sylvan Goldman bigraphy, stories - Inventors

Sylvan Goldman : biography

November 15, 1898 – November 25, 1984

Sylvan Nathan Goldman (November 15, 1898 – November 25, 1984) was an American businessman and inventor of the shopping cart, which had a pair of large wire baskets connected by tubular metal arms with four wheels.Terry P. Wilson, The Cart that Changed the World: The Career of Sylvan N. Goldman (University of Oklahoma Press, 1978). ISBN 978-0-8061-1496-5Richard S. Tedlow, "Review of Wilson, T. P., 1978, The Cart That Changed the World: The Career of Sylvan N. Goldman", in The Business History Review, vol. 54, no. 1, 1980, pp. 135-136Ted Morgan, On Becoming American: A Celebration of What it Means and How it Feels (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978, pp. 45-6). ISBN 978-0-395-26283-2

Personal life

On June 7, 1931, Goldman married Margaret "Babe" Katz of Stillwater, Oklahoma; they had two sons: Monte Henry Goldman and Alfred Dreyfus Goldman. October 15, 1985 His sons lost most of the $400 million that Sylvan had left to them over brotherly squabbling and poor investments. October 28, 1997 Both sons committed suicide: Monte in 1995 January 12, 1995 and Alfred in 1997.

Early life

Born Sylvan Nathan Goldman to a Jewish family, retrieved April 14, 2013 page 122 the son of Hortense (née Dreyfus) retrieved April 13, 2013 and Michael Goldman, in Ardmore, Chickasaw Nation, Oklahoma. retrieved April 14, 2013 His mother had emigrated from France and his father from Lithuania. He has one older brother Alfred. His father worked at various dry goods stores owned by his wife’s family, one of which was located in Indian territory where Sylvan was born. Sylvan was raised in the Jewish faith and was bar mitzvahed. Sylvan learned the retail trade from his father and his mother’s uncles.

Goldman served in World War I as a food requisitionist in France. His brother served in the US Army but was discharged for health reasons.He has one older brother Alfred. Goldman was not educated past the eighth grade.

Philanthropy

Goldman and his wife were known for their philanthropy. As a patron of the arts and he contributed many works of art to Oklahoma institutions. He gave time and money to the National Conference of Christians and Jews at the Southwest Center for Human Relations at the University of Oklahoma. He received many honors, including honorary chief of the Pawnee Indian Tribe (1950), the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanities Award (1965), a Distinguished Service Citation from the University of Oklahoma (1971), induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame (1971), and an honorary doctor of law degree from Oklahoma City University (1974). In January 1983 the Oklahoma Blood Institute moved to the Sylvan N. Goldman Center, located at 1001 North Lincoln Boulevard and named for Goldman, who donated $1.5 million for the center.

Career

After the war, in 1919, Sylvan and his brother Alfred opened the Goldman Brothers Wholesale Fruits and Produce in Breckenridge, Texas. They were initially very successful due to the then oil boom in Texas, but their situation quickly deteriorated once the boom ended. The brothers then moved to California where they worked for grocery wholesalers. Initially planning on opening their own wholesale food business in California, they instead returned to Oklahoma at the behest of their uncles who wanted to start their own retail food store chain. The uncles offered to put up all the money as well as to cede the brothers a 75% interest in the venture. Accepting the generous offer and armed with an understanding of a new store concept that they had seen in California, the "supermarket" – where all different types of food were available for sale in a single store and customers served themselves – they returned to Oklahoma and founded the state’s first supermarket, the Sun Grocery Company. They opened their first store on April 3, 1920, at 1403 East Fifteenth Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma with Sylvan serving as president and Alfred as vice president. Within one year, they were operating twenty-one Sun Grocery markets throughout the state. Within three years, they had fifty-five stores.