Ted Turner Interview (page: 4 / 7) Founder, Cable News Network	Print Interview

A really interesting example of turning something dark into something positive was when you were suspended in 1977 from showing up at the stadium for the Braves.

Ted Turner: I couldn't go in my office. I could sit in my seat, but I couldn't go in the clubhouse. Couldn't talk to the players or the coaches. It hurt. I couldn't go in my office.

So you turned around and won the America's Cup.

Ted Turner: That's right.

Tell us about your attraction to sailing. When did you learn how to sail?

Ted Turner: When I was about ten years old, I went out. My father had a sailboat, and I went out with him, and then I started racing when I was 11 or 12, and for 33 years it was very important to me, and I raced in thousands of races and won hundreds of them.

What does it take to be a great racer on the sea?

Ted Turner: It takes the same things it takes to be great at anything. First of all, you have to have some ability, and then you have to work real hard, and that's what I did. I had some ability, not a great amount.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. In the first eight years that I raced sailboats, I never won. I was sailing at Savannah Yacht Club in Savannah, Georgia, and I never won a club championship. I was second almost all the time, but I never won once in eight years. And then in my ninth year of racing, I went to college and started racing there, and all the work that I had done -- because those first eight years, I wasn't really losing. I was learning how to win. From then on, from my first year in college, I won just about all the time. Not all the time, but I won way more than my normal share of the races.

Weren't you named the best sailor in New England?

Ted Turner: Yeah, Best Freshman Sailor. I was named Yachtsman of the Year four times. No man has ever done that, before or since. It's like the MVP. They have an award that yachting writers select. They were all in the '70s, that was when I was really on top.

Could you tell us a little bit about what you went through in 1979? You won that race, but unfortunately, lives were lost.

Ted Turner: The Fastnet race. Yeah. It was the roughest race in history. I think 16 or 17 people were killed, and of the 300 boats, like 50 of them sank or were disabled, and about 90 finished, and the other 50 dropped out.

You didn't abandon ship?

Ted Turner: No. We kept racing. We won by three and a half hours.

It must have been incredibly scary.

Ted Turner: It was, but I was more scared of losing than I was of dying.

How did your crew feel about that?

Ted Turner: They were with me. They said, "You're the man." We kept going at full speed during the height of the storm.

Sailboats were flipping over.

Ted Turner: Right. We got knocked down repeatedly, knocked right down flat, but we came back up because we had a lead keel on the bottom of the boat. I knew I had a strong boat, but we hit the waves so hard that when the race was over and we inspected for damage, we found that the whole front of the boat, all the welds had cracked and broken. So the plates were floating. The hull plates were floating on the frames. All the welds had broken in the front part of the boat, and we had to take the boat out of the water and completely re-weld it in the boat yard. But the plates didn't give, thank God, or we would have sunk like a rock and I wouldn't be here now.

You're a man who thinks big. Where did this ambition come from?

Ted Turner: From society.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. It started with my father. He always said, "Son, you gotta work hard and be a big success." And when I got to school, that's what they told me in school. I went to military school -- boarding school -- for a number of years. That's what they said and so all I did really was do what I was told: Work hard and be a big success.

What kind of student were you?

Ted Turner: Pretty good. I was a pretty good student. I was a B-plus student for the most part. I would say I never quite got straight A's, but one period I got three A's and a B. That was the best I ever did.

Is it true that you had an ambition to be a missionary originally?

Ted Turner: At one time. I wouldn't say originally. I was going to a religious school when I was in high school. We were exposed to a lot of evangelists and I got converted to Christianity.

Were you a big reader when you were young?

Ted Turner: I was. At boarding school, we had required study hall, and I was usually able to get my homework done in less than the two-and-a-half hours, and I read the rest of the time. I did some reading, just for information, on my own. But mostly, when I didn't have to, I was outdoors doing things. I was always doing things rather than reading about them, but I've read a lot in my life.

What did you especially enjoy reading when you were young?

Ted Turner: When I was young, mainly I read history. I was fascinated by history, and I read a lot about animals and birds. I was fascinated by nature, but I really was interested in lots of things. I was interested in movies and somewhat in sports. I was interested in just about everything.

Your interest in the Civil War has been demonstrated by a number of your films and TV shows. Was that an interest when you were young as well?

Ted Turner: When I studied history, I was perhaps most fascinated by military history. Growing up in the South, and having moved down from the North, the Civil War was all around us. I went to school for six years in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Missionary Ridge, where one of the great battles was fought. So there were monuments all around. World War II, because my father fought in that, and I was alive during it, even though I was a young boy, I remember it vividly. The Civil War probably drew my interest a little bit more than some of the others.

How did you take to boarding school? Did you like being there?

Ted Turner: Not really. I would have rather been home because it was pretty confining. We were stuck on the campus most of the time, and even though we were close to some trees that were on the campus, it was confining, and I couldn't view birds and wildlife as much as I would like to have been able to do after school in the afternoon.

Were you a problem kid? Did you make trouble at the schools?

Ted Turner: I was a mild problem kid. I didn't cause any serious problems, but I was mischievous. The usual things.

Were there any books that particularly meant a lot to you when you were growing up?

Ted Turner: Sure, lots of them. Lots of them. When I got to college, I was a classics major, and that was mainly the study of Greek -- and to a lesser extent Roman -- history and culture, and that fascinated me: the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid by Virgil. I enjoyed Gone With the Wind and history books, as I said, of all types. I was fascinated by naval history. Then I ended up, you know, spending a good bit of my time racing sailboats, and when I did that, I fancied myself a modern Horatio Nelson.

Going back to your roots, your father's father was a farmer, wasn't he? Did that have an influence on your own love of the land?

Ted Turner: Yes, no question about it. My father loved land, too, and so did my grandfather, and I love the outdoors and nature and flowers and trees and plants and everything from insects to elephants.

Your grandfather's fortunes took a downward turn during the Depression, didn't they?

Ted Turner: Yeah. He lost his business and his farm, my grandfather did, and my father had to drop out of college. He couldn't afford to go because my grandfather lost everything. He never did declare bankruptcy, but he lost everything in the first year of the Depression.

Do you think that influenced your father's work ethic?

Ted Turner: No question about it. He hated to see his father lose everything, and he was tremendously afraid that that would happen to him, too. He had an almost paranoid fear of going broke.

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