Getty Ross and Margot Perot
Ross Perot’s family is mourning his loss after he passed away from leukemia at the age of 89, according to the Dallas Morning News.
The outlet reports that Perot was diagnosed with leukemia in February and a massive secondary infection the next month nearly killed him. However, Perot’s family said he still showed up to the office most days.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Perot Received His 1st Business Lesson From His Father at the Age of 6
GettyPerot pictured in 1992.
According to his official website, Ross was the third child of Lulu May Ray and Gabriel Ross Perot. He was born in Texarkana, Texas, in 1930. His father was a cotton broker while his mother worked for a lumber company as a secretary. Perot’s father’s business slogan was, “Sell it. You can’t eat it.”
Ross was named Henry Ray, after his maternal grandfather. However, during his teenage years, he changed his middle name to honor his father, who passed away when Ross was 25 years old. On his official biography, Perot described the business training he received from his father saying, “I really wanted a bicycle. My dad looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘Son, work, save your money and buy a bicycle.’” That bio said during the depression that although times were tough for the Perot’s they “were better off than many other American families.”
Perot studied at Texarkana College before entering the U.S. Naval Academy in 1949. He graduated with the class of 1953.
2. Ross Is Survived by His Wife Margot & Their 5 Children
GettyPerot dances with his wife Margot shortly before delivering his concession speech 03 November 1992 where he congratulated U.S. President-elect Bill Clinton but also vowed to continue his efforts, TX.
Ross met his wife, Margot Birmingham, who was from Greensburg, Pennsylvania in 1952. According to Dallas Morning News, the two went on a blind date when he was a midshipman and she was studying at Goucher College in Baltimore.
Ross married Margot in 1956 and the two have been married since. She was by his side when he famously ran as an independent in the 1992 presidential race. The outlet reports that Ross maintained a busy social calendar with his wife of over 60 years.
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Ross and Margot had five children, Ross Perot Jr., Nancy, Suzanne, Carolyn, and Katherine. They were extremely important to him.
Nancy Perot told Dallas Morning News that there was a private, tender side to her father, which was often eclipsed by his “bolder-than-life” public persona.
“I want people to know about Dad’s twinkle in his eyes,” she told the outlet. “He always gave us the biggest hugs. We never doubted that we were the most important things in his life.”
Rest in LOVE, Ross Perot. #SpiritOfTexas
H. Ross Perot, Jr. & Jay W. Coburn journeyed around the globe in their Bell 206L-1 LongRanger II (N3911Z)
Taken on 30 September 1982
According to Forbes, Ross Perot Jr. graduated from Vanderbilt Univerity and went on to found a real estate development company named Hillwood. He currently lives in Dallas, Texas with his wife Sarah and their four children.
According to Hillwood, Perot Jr. serves as the chairman of the Perot Group, which manages a variety of family interests including real estate, oil and gas, and financial investments. He is the chairman of Hillwood as well. At the time of his father’s death, the 60-year-old’s net worth was reported to be $2.3 billion.
“Describe my father?” Ross Perot Jr. said in an interview. “Obviously a great family man, wonderful father. But at the end of the day, he was a wonderful humanitarian. Every day he came to work trying to figure out how he could help somebody.”
“As many of you know, this great American was the father of our bookstore’s owner. Our staff joins the nation in mourning his passing,” the store wrote on Facebook.
According to D Magazine, Nancy Perot was an English major, who went on to work 12 years as a freelance writer. She told the outlet that she has “always loved books and the written word.” She thinks cities need more bookstores, so she opened the independent Interabang Books in Dallas, Texas in 2017.
3. Perot Traced His Lineage to a French Immigrant to Louisiana
According to one biography, Perot traced his lineage through his father to a French immigrant to Louisiana in the 1740s. House of Names says that the Perot name first appears in the Middle Ages in the northern French region of Brittany. That page mentions that people with the last name Perot were among the 10,000 French Acadians who refused to take an oath of allegiance to the monarch of England and thus were deported to Louisiana in 1755.
4. Perot’s Older Brother, Gabriel, Died at the Age of 2
Perot’s older brother, Gabriel Ross Perot Jr., was born in 1924 but sadly passed away in 1927 at the age of two, close to his third birthday. In June 1992, Perot told the New York Times that his brother died due to a stomach disorder. Perot said, “You just have to understand what it’s like to lose a child. I mean, it broke my parents’ heart, ’cause they adored him, and he died of something that you could fix in 20 minutes today.”
The Times report goes on to say that Perot at the age of 12, then known as Henry Ray Perot, adopted his brother’s middle name, Ross, as his first name. Perot adds that for his parents as the years went on, the sadness “diminished” but never “disappeared.”
5. Perot’s Sister, Bette, Formerly Ran the Family’s Foundation
Perot told Newsweek in 1992 that his sister, Bette, was responsible to running the family’s foundation. Perot said that his sister had been warned to avoid “glitzy proposals” and to focus on those who stick to “three-ring binders.”
Ross Perot Jr. told Dallas Magazine in April 2017 that Bette Perot had been one of the “founders of the food bank in North Texas.” In a separate interview with Texas Monthly, Ross Perot Jr. noted that aside from him and his father, “We had a family of all women… Aunt, grandmother, [four] sisters, and Mom.”