Arkansas Library Dumps Coughlin Name
Posted on February 2, 2006 by webteam
From the Benton County Daily Record:
As the Bentonville Public Library moves ahead with a new building, officials will leave something behind: the name “Coughlin.”
Within hours of former Wal-Mart Vice Chairman Tom Coughlin’s guilty plea to charges of five counts of wire fraud and one count of tax evasion, the Bentonville Public Library Foundation Board of Directors met to approve changing the new facility’s name.
In February 2005, officials announced that the Wal-Mart/Sam’s Club Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation would donate $4 million — in honor of Tom and Cynthia Coughlin — toward construction of the new library. At the same time, it was announced that the new library would bear the Coughlin name.
A little over a month later, in late March, Wal-Mart asked for and received Coughlin’s resignation from the company’s board of directors after an internal investigation turned up possible wrongdoing — in the form of thievery. Coughlin was accused of using bogus expense vouchers and unauthorized gift cards to make personal purchases amounting to at least $400,000.
Plans for the new library continued to reflect its new name until the foundation meeting Tuesday night. The board voted to change the new building’s name to the existing library’s name: The Bentonville Public Library.
Click here to read the full story.
Click here to read about Wal-Mart heiress Paige Laurie and the former Paige Laurie Arena at the University of Missouri.
