Robert A. Magowan Dies; Headed Safeway Stores

Robert A. Magowan, the executive credited with making Safeway Stores Inc. the nation’s largest and most profitable supermarket chain, died Tuesday after a long illness. He was 82.

Magowan managed Safeway, which has annual sales of about $20 billion, from 1955 until he retired as board chairman in 1971. He remained chairman of the company’s executive committee until 1979.

Magowan was known as a hands-on manager who wrote daily memos. But he made no bones about how he got his job.

“I’m not one of these fellows who pulled himself up by his bootstraps,” he once said. “The plain fact is that I married the daughter of a very prominent man.”

Suggested for Job

That man was Charles Merrill, founder of the brokerage firm that later became Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith. Merrill was a director and large stockholder in Safeway and suggested Magowan for the top job.

A Harvard graduate, Magowan worked for Merrill’s brokerage firm for 17 years before assuming the leadership of Safeway.

Safeway now is headed by Magowan’s son, Peter, who is chairman and chief executive officer.

The elder Magowan also was chairman of the Charles E. Merrill Trust, which gave more than $100 million to charity during a 25-year period.

Magowan is survived by five sons and his wife, Doris Merrill Magowan.