John Walton, reputedly the world's 11th-richest man, and the second son of the man who founded the US-based Wal-Mart retail colossus, died on Tuesday in a light aircraft accident at the age of 58.
He had a passion for flying and regularly piloted himself in a Mitsubishi executive turboprop. But an experimental ultralight aircraft he was testing in Wyoming crashed shortly after take-off.
Like others members of Sam Walton's family, John sat on the board of Wal-Mart, though he did not assume his directorship until after his father's death in 1992, and played little part in the running of its vast retail operation. Fortune magazine estimated his personal wealth at $18.2 billion. Most of it came from the family business, but he also invested in a wide range of other enterprises around the world, and had recently established a special holding company to manage this portfolio.
Walton tended to avoid the limelight and rarely gave interviews, but he had become increasingly controversial through his contributions to right-wing political causes in the US. Last year he gave strong backing to Arnold Schwarzenegger's successful gubernatorial campaign in California, but his most enduring and contentious battle was over America's ailing public education system.
The leader of one of the US teachers' unions last year accused Walton of trying to "Wal-Martise" state schools by introducing tax-funded vouchers which would enable parents to pay for private education.
Edithe Fulton, president of the New Jersey Education Association, proclaimed that his "shadowy presence is tangible proof of a national struggle for the future of public education - and for political control of urban America - by conservative forces".
Walton's defence was to assert that his campaign was vital for the continued health of American society. "I don't like to waste money," he said. "I think for-profit education providers are a wonderful addition to the education reform movement because they bring operating disciplines, as well as new capital, that have not been available before."
In 1999 Walton donated $50 million to the Children's Scholarship Fund, a scheme set up to allow 40,000 poor children to attend private schools. At the time he also claimed to have given money to state schools for teacher training and scholarships, but commented that "we have had a much more difficult time evaluating the benefits of those investments than we have had with our voucher investments, where the benefits are so clear and convincing".
Walton was born after his father's return from wartime service with US military intelligence. Sam Walton initially invested in a small department store in Arkansas, and John therefore enjoyed a comfortable childhood in the rural south, with little evidence of the extraordinary financial bonanza that was heading his way.
In 1962 his father opened the first store in the Wal-Mart chain, basing the business on what were then revolutionary marketing principles. Wal-Mart is now the world's largest retailer, employing 1.5 million people and with a turnover last year of $285 billion. When he died in 1992, Sam bequeathed the business to his wife and their four children. At the time of his death, John owned about 12 million shares in the company, and shared ownership with the rest of his family of another 1.7 billion.
In the 1960s, however, with the stores not yet having evolved into the dominating force they would become, John followed a conventional middle-class American adolescence. He went to university in Ohio and was duly conscripted for military service in Vietnam with the medical arm of the Green Berets, an elite army unit. He was also awarded a silver star for saving several colleagues under fire.
Walton had already gained a youthful reputation as a daredevil and was fascinated by machinery, building his own motor cycles and light aircraft. His obsession with flying carried into his first marriage in the 1970s, when he worked with his wife as a crop duster. Later he turned to boat-building, but by the 1980s the money from the family business was starting to pour in and his need to earn a living rapidly receded.
Walton's interest then became focused on a variety of conservative political causes, which he had the means to fund generously. But he strongly denied being linked to the fundamentalist right as it grew to its present powerful influence on the Republican party. "My mother," he said sardonically, "wishes I was more religious." Walton is survived by his second wife, Christy, and their son.
John Thomas Walton: businessman, born October 8th, 1946; died June 28th, 2005