Nancy Walton Laurie is the daughter of the late Bud Walton, the brother and business partner of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. At Bud's death, she and her sister Ann Walton Kroenke inherited a stake in Wal-Mart now worth over USD$6 billion. She is president and founder of a New York City dance company called Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet.[1] She is the owner of Columbia Performing Arts Centre, a dance studio located in Columbia, Missouri. She and her husband Bill, major contributors to the University of Missouri–Columbia despite neither having attended the school, were caught up in a scandal surrounding the naming of the school's new basketball arena in 2004. They had made a $25 million naming rights gift that went to the funding of the $75 million arena, and named the facility Paige Sports Arena after their daughter, Elizabeth Paige Laurie, who also did not attend the university. After Paige graduated from University of Southern California in 2004, a former roommate charged that she had been paid $20,000 over four years to do Paige's homework for her. Once the charges were aired on the ABC news program 20/20, the elder Lauries relinquished naming rights of the facility, which is now known as Mizzou Arena. In June 2005, the college roommate was on the Ion Television show Lie Detector.[2] In September 2005, Paige voluntarily surrendered her degree and returned her diploma to USC. Nancy and Bill formerly owned the St. Louis Blues hockey team until 2005, when they sold the team to Dave Checketts. In September 2007, Nancy purchased an 18,378-square-foot residence in the McDonald Heights community of Henderson, Nevada for $19 million.[3] It is considered the largest home purchase in the history of the Las Vegas metropolitan area.[4]
