Charles P. Lazarus, who founded Toys ‘R’ Us six decades ago, died on Thursday (March 22nd), one week after the iconic toy chain announced that it was liquidating its stores and going out of business. He was 94. Lazarus, who stepped down as CEO of Toys ‘R’ Us in 1994, opened a baby furniture store called Children’s Bargain Town in 1948 in his hometown of Washington, D.C.

He began selling toys after a couple of years when customers began asking for them, and switched to focusing on toys after he realized it was a more lucrative business. He opened the first of his stores that would grow to dominate toy retailing in 1957, calling it Toys R Us with the “R” spelled backward to make it seem like a child wrote it.