James W. Walter, Sr.*

Jim Walter was born in Lewes, Delaware, in 1922, and moved with his family to Tampa, Florida, when he was six months old. In 1946, as a 23-year-old Navy veteran working as a truck driver for his father's citrus business, Walter happened across a two-line classified ad in a local newspaper offering a "nice, unfinished house" for $895. With $400 in savings and the rest borrowed from his father, Walter bought the house, moved it to a small lot, and a few days later sold it for a profit. Within days, he and the original owner of the home had struck up a partnership. During their first week in business, they took orders for 27 homes, startling evidence of the tremendous postwar demand for affordable housing. Two years later, Walter and his partner parted amicably, with Walter agreeing to keep the business after his partner opted for $50,000 cash.

Within 15 years, the company had assets of more than $100 million and had built nearly 75,000 houses. In 1955, the company went public as Jim Walter Corporation and by the early 1960s, had begun an ambitious program of diversification and internal expansion. It broadened its product line to include building materials; a full line of pressure pipe and fittings for water and waste water transmission systems; products for commercial and industrial markets and natural resources such as coal and marble; and a California savings and loan operation. In 1988, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts acquired Jim Walter Corp. for $3.3 billion.