Call Me Ted

by Ted Turner

  Unfortunately, I was better in business and sailing than I was in marriage. With Judy Nye, we were impulsive people who barely knew each other when we were married. Still, we managed to stay together for three years and had two great children together—Laura and Teddy. My second marriage, to Jane Smith, lasted more than twenty years and was quite a bit more complicated. We had three children in four years—Rhett, Beau, and Jennie—and with Teddy and Laura joining us unexpectedly, home life was chaotic. In my mind, Janie never could treat my two older children as if they were her own and there’s no doubt that I was resentful of that. I was away racing and working a lot and that clearly didn’t make things any easier, and she probably took out on Teddy and Laura some of the frustrations that were really aimed at me.

  I’ve tried to be the best person that I could be, both at work and in my personal life, but monogamy for me has always been a struggle. As noted earlier, from an early age my dad told me “real men run around,” but as I’ve reflected on his philosophies I no longer think he had it right. Maybe it’s too late for me to change my ways but as my children have grown I’ve encouraged them to follow my advice and not my example when it comes to being in committed relationships.

  Janie and I both tried to make the marriage work but when our kids were little, we were both too exhausted to think about much else than being good parents. After our children grew older, Janie and I weren’t on the same wavelength when it came to thinking about the big picture and as I became more involved in working on global issues, we had less in common.

  When I met J. J. Ebaugh, things were completely different. Not only was J. J. concerned about world problems, she also challenged me to think more about them myself. It was a better partnership than any I’d had before.

  By the late 1980s, I’d been seeing J. J. on and off for about six years. Our relationship had become more serious—and more public—and with my children now grown, Janie and I separated. My wealth had increased a great deal during our marriage and my lawyers expressed concern that Janie may try to get a substantial sum in alimony. The way I looked at it, she deserved it. I never made things easy for her but she still hung in there with me through a lot of ups and downs. Divorce is always difficult but in this case the settlement negotiations were fair and went smoothly. We’d been drifting apart for the last few years so when our final arrangement was completed in October of 1988, it was a sad, but not completely sudden, end. Our marriage was never easy, but Janie and I had a lot of good times together and when we officially went our separate ways, our children were fine young adults. I’ll always be grateful to her.

  An Atlanta magazine cover once described J. J. as “The Woman Who Tamed Ted Turner,” and many assumed that as soon as my divorce was final, she and I would be married. She certainly did have an impact on me and we’ve had some great times together. Among other things, she helped me understand the value of getting counseling during times of stress. I’d had some problems with mood swings when I was a kid—probably because of being sent away at such a young age and the anxiety that my life produced. I remember at the age of nine or ten just deciding on my own that I was going to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative—just like that song suggested—and that helped me a lot.

  Still, in the 1980s a doctor diagnosed me with bipolar depression and put me on lithium. I took this medication for a couple of years but I couldn’t tell that it made much of a difference. When I switched psychiatrists, I had a thorough interview that led to a completely different diagnosis. My new doctor asked me questions like whether I ever went for long stretches without sleep (only when I was sailing, I told him), and whether I ever spent inordinate amounts of money. (We both got a chuckle out of that one. I’d been known for spending a lot of money at the company but he decided that this spending was never made out of the irrationally poor judgment that bipolar people often display.) He concluded that while I definitely had an uncommon drive and still do struggle with occasional bouts of anxiety, I don’t have depression, and he canceled the lithium.

  J. J. was a supportive partner throughout and we did consider getting married. But the more intimate we were, the more difficult our relationship became. J. J. also discovered that she was wrestling with some of her own psychological issues, and while we still cared about each other (and remain friends to this day),we realized that a long-term relationship just was not in the cards.

  After parting with J. J., I went back to dating and during this time I read in the paper that Jane Fonda was getting a divorce from her husband. Instantly, I thought to myself, “Jane Fonda is someone I’d like to go out with!” Jane and I had met briefly several years before at a screening in Los Angeles and I had come to admire her over the years. During the Vietnam War mine was still very much a “my country, right or wrong” mentality, and I disapproved of her stance against the war. Over time, however, I changed my views and felt that the people who spoke out against the Vietnam conflict were right and courageous. I also admired what she had accomplished, first with her movies and later with her exercise videos. When VCRs came along, she was one of the only people— outside of the porn industry—who could sell videocassettes in big numbers.

  A TED STORY

  “I Think I’m Going to Call That Woman Up”

  —President Jimmy Carter

  The first time I was really alone with Ted and had a chance to talk at length with him was one weekend when Rosalynn and I went down to visit him. We were out in a little boat fishing in his hundred-acre lake—one of the best bass lakes on earth—and Jane Fonda had just announced that she was going to divorce.

  Ted said to me, “I think I’m going to call that woman up and ask her for a date.” (I didn’t have a very favorable opinion of Jane then but I’ve changed my mind dramatically in the years since I’ve come to know her—she’s one of the finest people I’ve ever met.) Anyway, I was there when he first had the thought.

  I asked my assistant to find Jane Fonda’s number and when I called I got right to the point. I told her that I’d read that her marriage with Tom Hayden had ended and I wanted to see if she’d like to go out with me. She was taken aback and told me that her divorce had just gone through—she said she was flattered by my interest but that she needed six months before she thought she’d be ready to date again. I told her I understood and after a few more brief words, we hung up. I’ve always believed that if you really want something, hard work is important and so is follow-through. In this case, I really wanted to go out with her, so when she told me she needed six months, I made a note to call her back then. When the day arrived, precisely six months after our first phone conversation, I called her again. I said, “Hi, it’s Ted Turner. The six months are up. Will you go out with me now?” She must have appreciated my persistence because she said yes and we agreed to see each other for dinner during my next trip to Los Angeles.

  I picked her up at her home in Santa Monica and I was taken with her the moment she met me at the door. From meeting her before and watching her in the movies I knew she was attractive, but as we talked through our dinner date I was surprised by the strength of our connection. Knowing that a lot of people assumed I was a male chauvinist and a greedy capitalist, I was up front with her. I let her know that my dad had raised me without a lot of respect for women and that this was something I’d been working hard to change, especially with my most recent girlfriend. And knowing of Jane’s political leanings, I even bragged to her about how many friends I had who were communists, including Castro and Gorbachev! I always tend to talk a lot when I’m excited or nervous and that night I was really excited.

  Before our date I’d done research on Jane and while a lot of people saw us as an unlikely couple, we really did have a lot in common. We both had difficult, complicated fathers and we both had a parent commit suicide (Jane’s mother killed herself when Jane was just twelve years old). I could tell right away that she was very smart and a hard worker. My sense was that, like me, she had a difficult upbringing t
hat contributed to her drive to be a super achiever. Jane and I also figured out very quickly that we cared about a lot of the same issues. Our first date together ended with a hug and I told her that I was smitten. I knew that Jane Fonda was someone I wanted to get to know better.

  It took a little persuasion but I convinced Jane to come visit my ranch in Montana that I had purchased a year before. I’d already acquired quite a bit of property but by this point not much in the West. In addition to Hope Plantation, in the late 1970s I purchased St. Phillip’s Island (near Hilton Head, South Carolina) and I owned an 8,000-acre plantation near Tallahassee, Florida, called Avalon. I also owned a beautiful piece of land and house on the coast of Big Sur, California. (I bought this when I was dating J. J.) I’d spent most of my recreation time on southern plantations or on the high seas, but I quickly fell in love with the beauty of Big Sky Country. Not only was the scenery spectacular (and there were a lot fewer biting bugs than in the Southeast), I discovered that fly-fishing on a mountain stream calms my nerves and is a delightful pastime. Since I was no longer sailing, fishing and hunting became my main sources of relaxation.

  My Montana ranch was beautiful, covering four thousand acres and with access to tremendous trout streams. Since it was the best property I’d seen out there, bar none, I decided to name it the Bar None Ranch. I remember how excited I was when I first went out there as a landowner. I went into the local store and bought a couple of pairs of stiff new jeans, western boots, and a cowboy hat. Walking out of the store I looked like a city slicker—I think I still had the price tag on my hat—and I’m sure the locals on the street got a good laugh!

  Jane accepted my invitation to spend the weekend in Montana and we shared an incredible few days. Being out there together was a special time for us. It was a great chance to get to know each other better and by the end of that trip I was thinking that Jane was someone with whom I could spend the rest of my life.

  Unfortunately, Jane wasn’t quite there yet, and shortly after she returned to Los Angeles, she let me know that she was dating an Italian soccer player turned actor who was seventeen years her junior. For Jane, I was a “younger man,” too—she had me by eleven months. I’d jokingly refer to him as her “Italian Stallion” and asked why she insisted on discriminating against older guys like me! I wouldn’t give up, and I continued to stay in touch—I’d call, send flowers, anything I could think of to help her realize that I was still interested.

  Finally, in January of 1990, her sister-in-law called to let me know that Jane had broken up with the “Italian Stallion” and was ready to go out with me. It was a great beginning to what would prove to be another eventful decade.

  23

  “Give Me Land, Lots of Land”

  After buying the Bar None Ranch and spending increasing amounts of time in Montana, I fell even more in love with the area. When I enjoy something, I have a tendency to overdo it, and when I was told that a larger ranch was coming on the market, I was interested. Jane and I were still getting used to the scale of the Bar None when I told her that now I was going to look into a property that was many times larger. The Flying D Ranch is more than 119,000 acres, situated between the Gallatin and Madison Rivers. It’s a beautiful property with good trout streams and it had a lot of pasture that would be perfect for a large bison herd. Jane thought I was crazy but for $21 million (or about $200 an acre) it seemed like it would not only be a great place, but also a terrific investment. I bought it in 1989.

  Like most large ranches, the Flying D contained a lot of signs of human impact, like power lines and poles and barbwire fences. One of the first things I wanted to do was get rid of all this junk and barbed wire. My goal was to restore the property to what it would have looked like 150 years earlier, before the white man came. It was a lot of work, but we removed just about every sign of human disturbance, save the dirt and gravel roads.

  Part of my desire to own this land was to make sure that it was never developed. Conserving this property for future generations seemed like the right thing to do, especially with so much development happening in that part of the country. I worked out a conservation easement with the Nature Conservancy that guarantees that the Flying D ranch will remain open space. I also began work to repopulate the property with bison, an animal that I’d been fascinated by for years. I’d purchased my first bison back in the 1970s—a bull and two cows—and kept them at Hope Plantation (where I also enjoyed raising and breeding bears, cougars, and other animals that had been native to that area in earlier days). I knew that the bison population had once numbered in the tens of millions before dropping to below a thousand, and for the Flying D to look like it looked hundreds of years before, we needed a large herd.

  A TED STORY

  “A Giant Environmental Canvas”

  —Russ Miller

  (RUSS MILLER IS VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER OF TURNER ENTERPRISES, INC.)

  I first met Ted in 1989 when he bought the Flying D. He invited ranch manager Bud Griffith and me up to the porch of the Spanish Creek house and we sat on the deck surveying the view shed in front of him. Ted had a book of prints by Karl Bodmer open on his lap. As we all sat there, Ted would look down at the print and up at the view shed, down at his lap, back up at the view. Finally, he looked at Bud and me and he said, “You see all that stuff out there?”

  And we said, “What do you mean?”

  “The haying equipment, the farm equipment, all of the buildings, all of the fences, all of the power lines, and the cattle, they’re all gone, because I want the landscape to look like these Bodmers.”

  It was apparent to me then that Ted was a romantic artist and he saw the landscape as a giant environmental canvas.

  Then, about a week later, Ted invited some of the leaders of the bison industry up to the Spanish Creek house again to talk about the prospect of raising bison on his ranches. After grilling them at length about the details of the prospective income and expense associated with bison he grinned at me and said, “Not only are we going to run bison, we’re going to make more money than cattle ranchers!”

  At that point I knew that Ted also was an astute businessman and that he saw the landscape as a compelling spreadsheet. About three years later Ted asked me to go to New Mexico to go and look at the Ladder Ranch, which he was considering buying. When I reported back to him that his happier bison would roam in Montana and not in New Mexico, he reminded me that the Ladder Ranch was home to three kinds of indigenous quail. In this conversation I realized that Ted also saw his land as a haven—a safe haven for native species. Now all three of those vignettes came together eight years and ten ranches later at our ranch manager’s conference. All of us who worked for Ted knew what his land ethic was firsthand. We’d lived and breathed it for the last ten years. But Ted joined us because he wanted to formalize that ethic in a mission statement, which was to manage Turner lands in an economically sustainable and ecologically sensitive manner, while promoting the conservation of native species. That to me captures what Ted’s land ethic is. Bison are the common thread that runs through all the ranches, but there are others as well. The thread of native flora, the thread of native fauna, and all woven together they create a rich tapestry that’s unified, diverse, and strong.

  During my early years of ranch ownership, my enthusiasm did lead me to make some mistakes. For example, the Flying D had hundreds of miles of barbed wire fencing and I had every bit of it removed, thinking this would allow the bison to roam free on about eighty thousand acres. I learned that when you do this, the animals tend to overgraze certain areas and undergraze others, and we had to bring back some limited fencing—not barbwire, I might add.

  The Bar None and Flying D gave me so much pleasure that I decided to buy as many large properties as I could reasonably afford. By the end of the 1990s, I had purchased two more ranches in Montana, three in Nebraska, one in Kansas, and one in South Dakota (they’re used primarily for bison ranching). Then between 1992 and 1996, I bought thr
ee large ranches in New Mexico. The biggest, Vermejo Park, is nearly 600,000 acres, and together these three ranches cover more than one million acres. They are also used for bison ranching, as well as hunting and fishing, and Vermejo sits on top of valuable natural gas that is being extracted by an energy company that has the rights. They do this work very carefully, extracting the gas while protecting the ranch’s beauty and wildlife.

  I’ve also enjoyed working on the return and protection of threatened and endangered species. In addition to bison (of which we now have about 45,000 head), we’ve worked to reintroduce about twenty other species. These include gray wolves, red-cockaded woodpeckers, and black-footed ferrets. These were all challenging projects so I looked for the best people I could to help manage the properties. I hired Russ Miller in 1989 and he’s been with me ever since, doing a terrific job as general manager of the ranches. In 1997 I created the Turner Endangered Species Fund, recruiting Mike Phillips (who led the effort to bring back the gray wolf to Yellowstone) to run the organization, along with my son Beau, who studied wildlife management at Montana State University after graduating from The Citadel.

  In Montana, I learned to love fly-fishing. It’s one of the few things I do that’s not only interesting and challenging but also relaxing. Unfortunately, it’s not a sport you can enjoy during a Montana winter (except on rare occasions), but I learned that there are rivers and areas in the Patagonia region of Argentina that are similar to those in Montana. Since South America is counter- seasonal to the United States, I could fish there during the North American winter. In ’97 I purchased a nine-thousand-acre ranch in Patagonia named La Primavera, and in 2000, a 93,000-acre property named Collon Cura. I also bought a 24,000-acre ranch and fishing lodge on the island of Tierra del Fuego. These three properties all feature great fly-fishing.