Across Arizona, the Fulton family name came to sit above engineering classrooms, teacher-training programs and a center caring for people with neuromuscular disease. Fulton, the homebuilder and philanthropist who converted business success into sweeping support for education and medicine, died on August 21, 2026, according to Fulton Homes. He was 94.

Born in Tempe on November 12, 1931, Fulton grew up during the Depression within walking distance of what later became the headquarters of ASU's engineering schools. He washed dishes in his mother's cafe as a child. As a teenager, he delivered The Arizona Republic to more than 500 customers each day and supervised other carriers' routes. A football scholarship took him to Arizona State College, where he met Mary Lou Henson. They married in 1954 and built a partnership that joined family, business and giving for more than six decades.

Fulton moved easily among industries. He sold cash registers for National Cash Register, where he earned the company's National Salesman of the Year distinction, then formed businesses serving corporate computer needs. In the 1970s he helped rescue Eagleson's Big and Tall, bought the two-store clothing company and grew it to 33 locations. In 1975 he founded Fulton Homes, which developed more than 60 communities across metropolitan Phoenix by 2021, according to ASU News.

The homebuilding fortune became a means to expand other institutions. In 2003, Fulton established a $50 million endowment for ASU's engineering college, which took his name. Three years later, Ira and Mary Lou gave the university $100 million for a range of initiatives, including support for the college of education that came to bear Mary Lou's name. By 2018, the Fulton family's contributions to ASU exceeded $160 million. The university honored the family that year as its Founders' Day Philanthropists of the Year.

Fulton did not treat university giving as a distant transaction. He attended engineering graduations, welcomed new students and spoke regularly at school events. His own summary was direct: "The biggest thing we enjoy is our engineering students." ASU Engineering News reported that as of 2018 he had not missed an engineering graduation since the schools took his name in 2003.

At Brigham Young University, the Fultons' involvement began in 1999 and reached programs across campus. They supported scholarships, mentored research, academic buildings, animation computing and a series of supercomputers named for Mary Lou. BYU renamed its College of Engineering and Technology for Ira on November 6, 2003. "You never know what kind of impact a good education will have on someone's life," he said in an account published by Brigham Young University. "The positive effects can go on for generations."

Their giving also grew from family grief. After their son Gregory died in 2011, Ira and Mary Lou donated $2.7 million to help create Barrow's Gregory W. Fulton ALS and Neuromuscular Disease Center. The 32,000-square-foot center, designed to bring clinical care and research together, opened in 2014. Their support also established an endowed chair in motor neuron disease at the center.

Mary Lou died in 2015 after 61 years of marriage. Fulton continued as chairman of Fulton Homes and remained a visible presence in the university and nonprofit communities he supported. His path from a Tempe paper route to retailing and homebuilding produced more than companies. It produced engineering and teaching programs bearing the Fulton name, computing resources for students, scholarships and a Barrow center where patient care and research continue under the name of his son.