b'C o m m u n i t yAbove & Left: The much anticipated new HEB in Frisco, in the DFW Metroplex.Above/Right: Whataburger condiments sold exclusively at HEB. Right: Customers lined up at dawn for grand opening in Plano.Far Right: HEBs popular prepared meals, sold ready to cook.time, Target was launching grocery sales in San Antonio, and both Trader Joesjustice system, founded the YWCA, the American Cancer Society chapter, and and Whole Foods were working on their second stores, each.the Nueces County Home for the Aged, along with a network of tuberculosis Eleven years later, HEBs market share in San Antonio has fallen from 60%clinics. While serving as the first and only woman on the states board gov-to 48%, with Walmart in second place with about 32%. In the Coastal Bend,erning mental hospitals, she single-handedly reformed the appalling system, HEB market share is 60%, with Walmart second with 25%. Nationally, HEBtraveling to each and every mental hospital in Texas to personally document is the #1 customer-rated grocery seller in the United States, with Amazonnegligence and abuse. There was zero chance that Charles Butts parents, both coming in 2nd. It is also rated the best retailer in the country to work for, anddevout Southern Baptists, would approve of selling alcohol in their stores, af-its per-transaction sales are at the top for all supermarket chains in the U.S. ter 66 years in business not doing soand maybe Charles knew it.HEBs biggest growth market is currently in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metrop- Charles Clarence Butt, born in 1938, was the youngest of the Butts surviving lex, which it is taking by storm. Stores of over 70,000 square feet are beingthree children, the oldest being Howard Jr., and then sister Margaret, and welcomed with a cult-like following and throngs of shoppers lined up be- baby Mary Beth who lived for just ten days in 1943. Charles grew up in Cor-fore dawn on opening day. pus Christi, and, one would assume, attended prestigious boarding schools A reliable tale told by an old South Texas guy,whose family was involvedelsewhere, though not confirmed, as there is virtually nothing published that in everything under the sun, said that in 1971, Howard Butts son, Charles,offers any depth into his personal life. He graduated from the University of who had been working for HEB since bagging groceries at age eight and wasPennsylvanias prestigious Wharton School of Business, and then earned an then a senior executive, visited his father at his expansive Ocean Drive estateMBA from Harvard Business School, before returning to Corpus Christi to (not the castle house, by the way, but the one next door) to discuss his well- work at HEB headquarters. Now age 85, Charles has never been married and thought-out plan to at last sell beer and wine in its stores. Howard, then agehas no children, and all that is known about him, outside his career leading 75, knew that Charles was the future of HEB, and that anything he wanted toHEB, is that he owns a super sailing yacht named Rebecca, a Bombardier jet, do then, would eventually happen after he retired and/or died. With the veryand lives in a mansion in San Antonios historic King William District.suggestion that alcohol be sold in his stores, Mr. Butt resigned on the spot asWhat we know best about Charles Butt, who turned over the President/CEO president of HEB, and told his son, Its yours. Take it. position to his nephew, Howard E. Butt, III, in 2021, while remaining Chairman Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth Butt, who married Howard Edward Butt 47 yearsof the company, is that he assumed leadership of his family business in 1971, earlier in Kerrville, lived a life of compassion and generosity. When the Buttsand over an even half-century, built an empire that is now the largest private-resided in the Valley during the Depression, she established the Texas Crip- ly-held company in Texas, the sixth-largest supermarket chain in the United pled Childrens Program and gave generously to families along the border.States, with the happiest and most devoted customers and employees in the After they moved to Corpus Christi in 1940, she improved the local juvenileentire industryall based on one mission: We Texans Love Our H-E-B!36THE COASTAL BEND GUIDE TheCoastalBend.com'