If you have ever shopped in a supermarket, filled a shopping cart full of food and had someone sack your groceries, you have Sylvan Nathan Goldman to thank. Syl Goldman was born in the Chickasaw Nation to a French mother and a Latvian father. He learned the retail store business from working in the family dry goods store in Ardmore, Oklahoma, but learned about the grocery business during World War I – he had learned French from his mother, so he was assigned to procure food for the US Army in France. After the war he worked in the grocery business for many years, including introducing the supermarket concept in Oklahoma at a store in Tulsa. After starting his first Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain in Oklahoma City in 1934, Syl looked for ways to make shopping more convenient which resulted in the invention of the shopping cart and the grocery sacker. Goldman amassed a great fortune by receiving a royalty for every shopping cart made in America.

Syl Goldman was equally a very generous philanthropist. With his wife Margaret, the Goldmans donated large buildings and small statues and provided major support for education, the Oklahoma Blood Institute, and the arts and humanities.