Long before he helped launch and edit The Agitator, long before moving to New Zealand, and launching a magazine and newsletter named  BayBuzz, Tom Belford spent six years building and running Ted Turner’s Better World Society –the first philanthropic venture  aimed at using the then largely untapped power of television for social change. And the only nonprofit with a Spokesfrog –named Kermit.

Last week, with Turner’s death, Tom could easily have written about the Turner the public remembers: the swashbuckling mogul who built CNN, made cable television unavoidable, won yachts races, bought baseball teams, and carried himself with the swagger of a man who thought the future belonged to him personally.

But Tom knew another Ted Turner. Turner the visionary when it came to philanthropy.

Writing from New Zealand Tom offers something richer than an obituary. Something only someone who was there can write.

A field report from inside the storm. And a farewell worth reading slowly.

What follows is Tom’s BayBuzz remembrance of Ted Turner.

UNFORGETTABLE!

I’ve had four outstanding heroes in my working life.

One of them, sailing champion and CNN founder Ted Turner, died this past week at age 87.

For a lucky six years, I had the enormous privilege of working with Ted, launching his first philanthropic venture (of many to come), a nonprofit created to produce television documentaries on global issues he considered critical — the environment, arms control and population growth.

My first meeting with Ted was a high point in my life. He invited me to his Atlanta headquarters because I had sent him a proposal for this venture. After a couple of hours of conversation, he said let’s do it, picked up the phone and told his chief executive, “I’m sending a guy down, give him $1 million”, hired me to run it, and then drove me to the airport.

As I got out of his car in shock, Ted said, “Quite a day, huh? Bet you didn’t expect that.”

After that I enjoyed (mostly) a book’s worth of ‘quite a days’ with Ted, many of them unexpected. This would be true of everyone who worked with Ted.

He had a motto that described him to a T — “Lead, follow or get out of the way” — variously ascribed to Revolutionary War patriot Tom Paine and to WWII’s General George Patton. Ted didn’t do too much following, and he never got out of the way.

This week’s accounts of Ted’s life have focused on his television and sporting achievements. Less so on his ‘do good’ activities and commitments, which became more and more significant as his fortune grew, culminating in a $1 billion donation to the United Nations … a deliberate (and successful) prod to shame other billionaires to donate their wealth at scale. Alas, I worked with him when one million was a heap!

A man of enormous contradictions, Ted could dish out verbal abuse that would make a marine drill sergeant crumble, flirt seriously with every passing girl on a walk down Park Avenue, or weep watching a nature documentary. In equal measure, it was all Ted.

Whatever his personal ‘idiosyncrasies’, Ted Turner should be remembered for his steadfast determination to the end to make the world a better place.

Unstoppable. Unprogrammable. Unforgettable.

Tom Belford