Riding Sidecar with Evel Knievel

“I have a retentive memory,” warns Stan Fulton, “so don’t tell me anything you don’t want me to remember.”

As his 80th birthday approaches, Mr. Fulton’s memory indeed appears quite sharp as he recounts his college days when, on a blind date, he met Betty, the woman who became his wife and mother to their six children. Mrs. Fulton was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2009.

In her honor, Mr. Fulton made a gift to the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. The former “Memory Garden” at the center’s Las Vegas location now is named the “Betty Fulton Reflections Garden.”

One of Mr. Fulton’s fondest memories of Betty is her wit. She frequently joked about their relationship. “She used to say, ‘Stan, life with you is like riding sidecar with Evel Knievel.’”

True, Mr. Fulton has embraced risk and lived a life of adaptation. After studying horticulture in college and serving in the U.S. Air Force, Mr. Fulton returned home to Maryland to work for his father, who operated a peach and apple farm, ran an appliance store and delivered propane to more than 3,500 retail customers. After a year on the job, he decided to strike out on his own and gave his notice. He asked his father for $5,000 as compensation for his year’s work, and his father handed him a check for $10,000. Mr. Fulton said, “Papa, I think you’ve made a mistake.” His father replied, “You’ll need it when you get out in the real world.”

His father was right. “Two years after leaving my father’s business, I wasn’t broke, but I was badly bent,” he says with a laugh. His first business, a Western Auto franchise in Florida, had failed. “I thought I was better than the numbers. I learned that’s impossible.”

Mr. Fulton regrouped and ultimately enjoyed success in business. At age 31, pursuing what he thought was a passion, he decided to go back to school to become a doctor and enrolled at Johnstown College. A professor there asked how he had spent spring break, and Mr. Fulton admitted that, rather than interning at a hospital, he had been sniffing around a cable television company he was thinking of buying. The professor said, “Stan, forget medicine. Go back to business, and if you’re as successful as I think you will be, then give generously.”

Mr. Fulton bought a cable TV company in Maryland and some real estate in Las Vegas. He founded Fortune Coin (which later became Anchor Gaming), invented multiline video slots, and engineered a cooling system for the PC boards of the computer systems housed in the slot machines. He recalls that he wrote his first check to a charity 48 years ago, to Johnstown College.

Mr. Fulton credits much of his success in business to Betty, whose frugality and support of his endeavors ensured that he always had the necessary capital on hand to invest in his various businesses. He continues to work at the office every day, and is currently engaged in five deals across a diversified gaming and racing portfolio.

If Mr. Fulton, the man with the steel-trap memory, could leave behind one memory for others, it would be his emphatic belief that “there will be a cure for Alzheimer’s someday. And the sooner we get there, the better the world will be.”