Who says a degree in liberal arts has its drawbacks?
Ask Macon Brock Jr., Dollar Tree Inc.’s chairman and co-founder. He parlayed a five-and-dime store into a mega-retailer with a market cap of $7.1 billion. Mr. Brock, Jr. co-founded Dollar Tree, Inc. (Dollar Tree Stores Inc.) in 1986 and has been its Chairman since September 2001 and served as its Chief Executive Officer from 1993 to 2003 and President from 1986 to 2001. Mr. Brock directs the overall operations of Dollar Tree.
And he graduated from Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia in 1964 with a degree in Latin and sat on its board of trustees for 18 years.
Brock also sits on the board of directors of flooring retailer Lumber Liquidators based in Toano.
Recently, Brock and his wife Joan donated $10 million to Randolph-Macon College for its capital campaign.
Brock chairs the campaign to raise $100 million and the Brocks have so far contributed $19 million.
Half of the $10 million is slated for the expansion and renovation of the student campus center and the other $5 million for an addition to the college’s science center.
Their names are icons on campus: the Brock Sports and Recreation Center and the Macon and Joan Brock Professorship in Psychology, a faculty seat the couple endowed in 2008.
“We certainly want to advance the college,” Brock said in a 2007 interview. “Joan and myself have made it a large part of our philanthropy. We believe in the liberal arts organization.”
In 2006 the Brocks contributed $3.3 million to Virginia Wesleyan’s Center for the Study of Religious Freedom, renovations for older dormitories, improvements to the school’s baseball-softball complex, an unnamed scholarship, the college’s annual fund for academic excellence and the Marlin Athletic Club.
Both give generously of their time for the community and the arts.
