Getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to me. And that’s just how my mother would have seen it. She even had a word for it.

    My parents came to this country in the early ’20s from Russia. They settled in a run-down Newark neighborhood, where my dad worked as cabinetmaker.

    Mother ran the house, taking care of my two older brothers and an older sister. But in her mid-forties rheumatoid arthritis left her bedridden. Her fingers and feet were bent like gnarled wood. Her doctor encouraged her to have another child, believing that pregnancy would be beneficial. I arrived on Mother’s Day, and to the amazement of everyone but her doctor, my mother was able to walk again.

    Yiddish was spoken in the house back then, and the word that was often on her lips was bashert, which means "It is destiny. It is God’s will." It was my mother’s way of acknowledging that good could come from whatever trials we faced. My own birth was the prime example to her that good things could come after enormous suffering. It was bashert.

    Although her arthritis never went away completely, she rarely complained about it. She wore plaster casts on her hands, taking them off to scrub our clothes in the bathtub of our cold-water flat or to cook over a tiny stove on days when it was so hot the walls baked. She believed things would get better. Shortly after I started school she announced that we would no longer speak Yiddish at home. Only English. And so as I learned to read, she looked over my shoulder, learning English with me from my Dick and Jane books.

    She and my father were studying to become citizens. Leaving the country of her birth and giving up her language were no loss to her when she thought about the privilege of becoming an American. It was, of course, bashert.

     My ambition was to go to college and then medical school. I enrolled at the Newark campus of Rutgers University so I wouldn’t have to pay to live in a dorm. I took premed courses and became friendly with the dean of students. One day he told me he’d arranged for me to get a scholarship to med school.

    Then came the devastating news. "But you’ll still have to pay ten thousand dollars," he said. There was no way I could put my hands on that kind of money.

    I quit school and hitchhiked to Florida. Halfway there, I called Mom and told her I’d never become a doctor.

    "Don’t worry," she said. "Something better is going to come along."

    I waited tables for a year. Then I returned to New Jersey and eventually enrolled in pharmacy school, graduating in 1954. Being a pharmacist got me into the retail business, and I really liked it.

    I worked for Two Guys, then a big discount retailer in the East, and after that went to Handy Dan, a very small chain of home improvement stores out West. I’d watch do-it-yourselfers come in and shop for supplies, never getting all they needed. One day the idea came to me: What if there were a huge store, a combination hardware store/paint store/lumberyard, where everything was under one roof? And what if there were salespeople who really knew how to repair a toilet or build a deck or install a ceiling fan? That’s how the dream started.

    It would have remained just a dream if it weren’t for the meeting my boss called me to in 1978. Even though we didn’t always agree, I expected him to congratulate me for growing Handy Dan to a very profitable large chain of stores. Shows you what I knew. He fired me.

    What was I going to do? How would I ever find another job? Who would want me? How would I cover my bills? I had two kids in college, one in high school and a big mortgage to pay. I couldn’t afford to get fired. I had worked hard at Handy Dan. Why did this happen to me?

    I knew what my mother would have said. She wasn’t around anymore, but I could still hear her exclaiming bashert! It was meant to be. It was God’s plan. Something good would come of this. Even this.

    That got me working on my idea of a huge superstore. There was a way to help all those do-it-yourselfers out there. I found some incredible partners and Home Depot was born, expanding across the country and globe.

    I recently retired at the age of 72. What would it be like after nearly 50 years to be away from the daily hustle and bustle of the retail business? I hadn’t been out of work since that fateful day in 1978 when I got fired. Back then I wasn’t sure what the future held. In fact, I still don’t. But I was sure of one thing—that word my mother used to describe the promise of God’s blessing. And now you know it too.