John T. Walton - Later Life

Later Life

After returning from Vietnam Walton learned to fly and went to work as a pilot for Wal-Mart. He later left the company to fly crop-dusters over cotton fields in several southern states and co-founded Satloc, an aerial application company that pioneered the use of GPS technology in agricultural crop-dusting. Walton then moved to San Diego where he founded Corsair Marine, a company that built trimaran sailboats. He also lived in Durango, Colorado and was an enthusiastic skier, mountain biker, hiker, motorcycle rider, sky diver and scuba diver.

In 1998, as part of the Philanthropy Roundtable, Walton and friend Ted Forstmann established the Children's Scholarship Fund to provide tuition assistance for low-income families to send their children to private schools. He was an advocate of school vouchers. For his achievements, he received the William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership.

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