CNN Money - February 18, 2009 (Fortune Magazine)
Around 4 p.m. on most afternoons, retired Wal-Mart executives gather in the men's-only grillroom of Pinnacle Country Club, the centerpiece of a gated community in Bentonville, Ark., that is home to some of the company's top managers. On the afternoon of Dec. 12, talk turned to the bombshell Lee Scott had dropped three weeks earlier. On the Friday before Thanksgiving, Wal-Mart's 59-year-old CEO announced his retirement after three decades with the company... So exactly who is this guy moving into Sam Walton's old office? Duke received a bachelor's degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1971. Not long after, he went to work in the logistics department of the May Department Store Co. in 1972, where he met Coleman Peterson, who would soon become HR director for Wal-Mart. When Scott told Peterson in late 1994 that he needed to hire someone who could one day replace him as head of logistics, Peterson told him he had just the guy. Scott took an instant liking to Duke, who soon became a confidant. The two belong to the same church, the Fellowship Bible Church, as do many other senior Wal-Mart executives. Read more>>>>