- Alumni
It will always be remembered as one of the great boarding student stories in McCallie history.
In the early 1950s, then-faculty member Yo Strang, while on dorm duty one evening in Founders Hall, noticed light pouring out from under a dorm room door after all the lights were supposed to be out for the night. "Who is responsible for that light?" Strang asked.
"Edison, T., sir," came the reply, full of bravado and mischief.
That student was Ted Turner '56, future media mogul, environmentalist and philanthropist extraordinaire, winning captain of the America's Cup yacht race in 1977, the former owner of America's Team, the Atlanta Braves, and the creator of the most significant change to television news in history with the launching of CNN, the 24-hour cable news channel.
Unfortunately, the lights went out for good on Turner's remarkable life on Wednesday, May 6, 2026. He was 87 and had valiantly battled Lewy body dementia for close to a decade. He is survived by his five children Teddy ‘81, Beau, Rhett, Jennie Turner Garlington and Laura Turner Seydel, as well as 14 grandchildren, including Rhett ‘18, and two great grandchildren.
"Ted was everything you hope a McCallie Man turns out to be," said former head of school Kirk Walker. "An incredible visionary, an ultra-successful businessman, and one of the greatest philanthropists and environmentalists we have ever known. Everything he set out to do, he accomplished, and beyond most people's wildest dreams. Yet McCallie remained one of the most important parts of his life. That says a lot about Ted, but it also says a lot about McCallie."
Indeed, in the book "It Ain't as Easy as it Looks" by Porter Bibb, Turner says of his six years as a McCallie boarding student: "I love McCallie. Probably no single thing or institution has influenced my life more."
Added Spencer McCallie III '55: "Ted was incredibly important to the financial health of the school with his notable generosity. I always enjoyed his visits and he always surprised me with a gift or something. There will never be another like him."
Current Head of School Lee Burns ‘87 recalled his initial encounter with Turner: "As a freshman at Dartmouth, I introduced myself to Mr. Turner after a talk he gave there. Upon realizing I was the grandson of Major Burns, he put me in an exuberant headlock and told me how much he loved my grandfather. As head of school decades later, whenever I visited him in Atlanta or he came to McCallie, he did not put me in a headlock, but he always told me about his love for McCallie and the profound impact it had on his life."
Perhaps no single person has had a greater impact on the everyday lives of Americans than Turner, whose bold idea to bring cable television to the masses, as well as 24-hour news to the world, was both brilliant and brash. Both achievements put the big three networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—on their heels regarding news reporting and forever altered entertainment programming by creating the so-called cable "Superstation" in WTBS, which broadcast the Braves, the NBA's Atlanta Hawks (which Turner also owned), and WCW wrestling.
His vision also gave new life to old shows and movies (Turner Classic Movies) through reruns. And the Braves' 1995 World Series title under Turner's ownership remains the Big Peach's only major professional sports championship to date.
That single sign of business genius, embracing what cable could be and how eager the masses were for round-the-clock news from around the world, generated the kind of personal wealth that allowed Turner to give $25 million to McCallie in 1994, followed by a stunning $1 billion to form the United Nations Foundation in 1997. For more than a decade, he was also the largest landowner in North America, with over 500,000 acres, much of which was populated with bison raised for his Ted's Montana Grill restaurants. In total, Turner is reported to have donated more than $1.3 billion to charitable and philanthropic causes.
It is also what Turner saw beyond the dollar signs that made him unique.
"In America, we emphasize that how much money you have is what determines how happy you are," he once said. "That is not right. What really determines your happiness is your relationships."
The relationship between Turner and McCallie began in the fall of 1950, when he left his family's home in Savannah, Georgia, to become a seventh-grade boarding student. It has occasionally been said that the school changed its policy not to admit boarding students until at least ninth grade, in part, because of Turner's antics.
For instance, he once engaged in a five-dollar bet with fellow students over which student could catch the most squirrels in a pillowcase. Turner then went out and lit a tin of shoe polish on fire at the base of a tree. The resulting smoke drove the squirrels out of the tree and into Turner's waiting pillowcase. Bet won.
He also came to embrace what being a McCallie student was all about. His love of a good argument not only drove him to lead the Blue Tornado to a state championship in debate but also won him the school's Holton Harris Oratorical Medal as well as the Linus Llewellyn Award, often given to the neatest cadet during the school's military days.
He was a member of the school's boxing team. He became an avid and accomplished sailor, which, of course, later led him to successfully defend the America's Cup aboard the yacht Courageous, earning him a Sports Illustrated cover on July 4, 1977, with the caption "Terrible Ted Takes Command." It is believed to be the only time a McCallie alum has graced the cover of SI.
This bent toward the nautical and, occasionally, the naughty, followed Turner from McCallie to Brown University. Although he captained the sailing team there and rose to vice president of the Brown Debating Union, Turner was later expelled for having a female student in his dorm room.
As a close friend and one-time Turner Broadcasting employee, Bob Hope (not the comedian) once said of Turner, "In some ways he was outrageous, but in most ways he was remarkable."
Said Spencer III, who was one year ahead of Turner at McCallie: "A lot of students didn't know what to make of him. He was interesting and unpredictable. He loved to test boundaries."
That outrageousness earned him the nicknames "Mouth of the South" and "Captain Outrageous," but Turner always remained remarkably loyal to McCallie. Though no one has ever connected the two events, in 1993, Craig Ingvalson '77—recently retired senior director of strategic planning and capital giving—brought Turner a baseball signed by several McCallie faculty members from his time at the school. Yo Strang's signature was on there, as well as Elliott Schmidt, Dean Warren James and W.O.E.A. Humphreys. Barely four months later, Turner announced his $25 million gift to the school.
Money was not all he gave, however.
"Whenever you would go to see him in Atlanta, you would be told he only had 15 minutes to see you," said Walker. "But invariably, when you would say, 'Ted, we know you are busy. We don't want to overstay our 15 minutes,' he would smile and say, 'Don't worry about that. Have a seat and tell me what is going on at McCallie.' He always had time to hear about McCallie."
On another occasion, Walker brought Turner a McCallie necktie. Turner replied, "Oh, I don't need this." But a little later in the visit, Turner excused himself to step into the bathroom inside his office.
"When Ted walked back out," recalled Walker, "he was wearing that tie."
On those times when he came to McCallie, and occasionally in the company of actress and activist Jane Fonda during their 10-year marriage, Turner always made time to chat with students, share stories, and answer their questions.
"He was always great with our students, but there were also times Ted could say something you might not want repeated," said Walker. "One day, he was talking to several students from the environmental club in the Millis-Evans Room, and a Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter happened to be there. Out of nowhere, Ted asks the students, 'Do you know what Jesus said to the disciples before the Last Supper?' For a moment I cringed. Whatever he was about to say, the Times Free Press reporter was probably going to write. But Ted just smiled and said, 'Jesus said, If you want to be in the picture, you have got to be on the right side of the table.'"
Turner was on the right side of so many issues, surely a reflection of his appreciation for McCallie's unbending principles of honor, truth, and duty. Whether it was his devotion to the environment, his goal for world peace and the end to nuclear proliferation, or his determination for CNN to practice fair, balanced reporting, he never compromised his values.
Hope also shared: "He had great passion for doing what was right for the world. He stated his dream of using communication to bring peace. He believed that if he could get people to understand each other, there would be no wars. His vision was bold and infectious. His Goodwill Games, his creation of the UN Foundation, and his approach to news on the original CNN were passions for peace."
Added Eric Bischoff, a professional wrestling promoter who worked with Turner on TBS's coverage of World Championship Wrestling, "He was an inspirational leader, he was a risk taker, he appreciated people who took risks. Ted was not afraid to fail; he was more afraid of not trying and not conquering that next horizon."
Ted Turner’s final visit to McCallie came in 2018, when a visibly weakened Turner arrived on campus to present his grandson, Rhett, with his diploma. On his drive to campus that day from the airport, his route took him through the Brainerd Tunnel. Looking to his left as he approached campus, Turner spied the school's chapel and happily exclaimed, "That's my school."
For the past 70 years, whenever McCallie School caught a glimpse of Robert Edward Turner III anywhere in the world, the school, his school, was proud to proclaim, "That's our alum."
Rest in peace, Ted.
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