Remembering Ted Turner
- Christy Murdock
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
As you know, I normally focus on the real estate industry, providing content marketing insights to help you do business. Today, however, I hope you'll indulge me as I write about something a little more personal, the passing of a great businessman and a great man, Ted Turner.
As you may know, Turner passed away last week at the age of 87. There have already been a lot of really great tributes written about him, including this one from coach Darryl Davis.
Ted Turner had an outsized impact on my life as a kid growing up in East Point, Georgia, a tough part of the metro area just south of Atlanta.
For me, Turner was a larger-than-life figure. He skippered the winning yacht in the Americas Cup. He owned both the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks at one time, and even, memorably, managed the Braves for one game.
He almost single-handedly created the concept of satellite television and pioneered much of the content we take for granted today, like round-the-clock news, oldies TV and even Cartoon Network.
But it’s what he did beyond the boardroom that is the most meaningful to me. He donated a billion dollars to create the UN Foundation, an organization focused on solving the world’s most intractable problems at scale. At the time, the donation was the single largest philanthropic gift in history.
What’s more, following the gift, he publicly shamed wealthy business leaders like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett for hoarding their money and failing to use it to make the world a better place. His criticism inspired both of them to begin giving their money away and was the foundation for what later became the Giving Pledge.
In retirement, Turner became the fourth-largest private landholder in the U.S. and the only individual to own an entire mountain range. He started a bison burger restaurant chain, Ted’s, to capitalize and monetize bison, creating a market that would sustain their rewilding. The 45,000 to 50,000 bison now estimated to roam across his extensive ranch holdings saved the great American symbol from the brink of extinction.
But what I loved most about Ted Turner was his devil-may-care spirit, his many rascally exploits, and his total inability to hear or respond to the words “it can’t be done.” As an old ADHDer myself, I recognize the signs in another, and I so admire his voracious interest in everything, from business to technology to the environment to people.
In a time of staggering income inequality, political cruelty and endless doomscrolling, we need more entrepreneurs like Turner. We need more people who see capitalism as a means to an end, with that end being the betterment of society and the improvement of life for everybody, not just the 0.1 percent.
We need more people with wild ideas that are designed to make the world more fun, more colorful and more interesting, not wild ideas designed to decimate jobs and turn democracy into serfdom.
One of Turner’s last public appearances was in 2021 at the 75th anniversary of Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. Ted and Jimmy had been friends for decades, based on their love of fishing, philanthropy and the Atlanta Braves.
Jimmy Carter died just over a year ago, another one of my childhood heroes. It’s hard to lose the people you’ve admired your whole life; those heroes are irreplaceable. I guess the best we can do is try our best to emulate them, and let their example make us better people.
When you’re a little girl from the wrong side of town in a Southern city that (at the time) got little respect or regard from the wider world, having a hometown hero who’s dashing, brilliant and just a damn fine person can give you a vision for yourself. It helps you believe that you can accomplish things, that you can go places, that you can be somebody.
May we all do our best to live up to the examples of our heroes, and may we all remember to hold a hand out to others and help them on their way. Rest in peace, Mr. Turner. You’ll be so missed.
