Bozeman Daily Chronicle
Ted Turner poked at a fire crackling in the fireplace of the house on his Snowcrest Ranch, not far from the ghost towns and ruins of Montana’s 1860s gold rush.
Turner pointed out how the large picture windows offer a fine view of the golden hills, where the deer, antelope and his bison can play.
“I came out to Montana mainly to go fishing,” he drawled. Today he owns 15 ranches across the United States, four of them in Montana. “I bought a couple of the first places for fishing, and then I started buying for the bison and all the other wildlife, too.
“The other thing I like to do is ride horses. This is a beautiful place to ride horseback. We have elk and deer, and bear, antelope. We just saw about 20 antelope. We just came in from riding.”
Turner turns 73 in three weeks, and though he’s a little hard of hearing, he still stands tall and straight. “I do yoga, I lift weights and I try to walk at least an hour a day. I weigh the same thing I did in college, in fact, less.”
He is only a part-time Montanan, spending 10 to 12 weeks a year here. Yet Turner’s impact on the state and Bozeman area has been wide-ranging. Asked how he’d assess his influence on Montana, Turner struck a modest stance.
“As a very humble man, I would say minimal,” Turner said. “We’re local citizens, and we’ve tried to buy locally as much as possible and be good neighbors and good citizens.”
Known for his tremendous energy, exuberant enthusiasm and penchant for outrageous comments that earned him the nickname the Mouth of the South, Turner on this October morning seemed subdued. Perhaps he has learned to be more guarded in interviews. Perhaps time has made him kinder and gentler. Perhaps he has embraced the role of world elder statesman, or he’s just a little weary from travel.
Turner said they slipped into town last night and stopped in downtown Bozeman for a bison burger dinner at Ted’s Montana Grill. Now he’s here at the Snowcrest Ranch with some guests, including George McKerrow Jr., his partner in creating 46 Ted’s Montana Grills across the nation.
The rock fireplace is adorned with two family portraits and a priceless 19th century Albert Bierstadt painting of the American West, part of the collection he loaned to Bozeman’s Museum of the Rockies in 2002 for a special exhibit. Off to one side, a TV is tuned to cable news.
The leather couch, the oriental rugs, the wood and stonework give an air of understated Western elegance. It’s a fine house, but comfortable, not ostentatious, considering this is owned by one of the world’s most famous billionaires.
Everything Ted Turner has done in his life is big.
Creator of the 24-hour news channel CNN and a cable TV empire that revolutionized the industry, Turner is worth an estimated $2 billion and ranks No. 212 on Forbes’s list of the richest Americans.
Turner is still up there, even though a few years back, he lost his entire business empire – CNN, the Turner-branded TV channels, the MGM movie library, everything he had built up over a lifetime mdash; and saw nearly $8 billion of his personal fortune evaporate after his business partners arranged the AOL Time Warner merger that ended in disaster.
It could have been a staggering setback, but Ted Turner perseveres. He continues to do big things. The last chapter of his 2008 autobiography, “Just Call Me Ted,” is entitled “Onward and Upward.”
He pledged $1 billion to the United Nations and stuck to his commitment even as his fortune plummeted. He is one of America’s biggest philanthropists, having made BusinessWeek’s list of top 50 givers for many years.
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