JD Rockefeller and Ted Turner

Rags to Riches A Comparative Essay on JD Rockefeller and Ted Turner

“Yet among men there are some endowed with vision, an insight more penetrating and more sustained. To their liberated spirit the world unfolds a farther prospect.” These words were spoken by Carleton Noyes to his class as they were analyzing The Harvard Classics (collection of poetry). This phrase means to reflect the driving genius behind such philanthropist entrepreneurs as John D. Rockefeller and Ted Turner. Both of these ‘supermen’ have displayed great determination in their lives, enabling each to accomplish far and above more mortal men. Ted Turner, for example, won the America’s Cup despite the fact that he had never been trained in competitive sailing. J. D. Rockefeller continued his work with the transportation and refining of oil though he was publicly excoriated for his merciless tactics of “winning at all costs.” We will seek to examine how determination, risk-taking, self-confidence, and vision enabled these men to excel in their respective lives.

Ted Turner was born as Robert Edward Turner in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1938. At age nine, Turner and his family moved to Atlanta, Georgia where his father began a billboard company. He was educated at the Georgia Military Academy in Tennessee, where he was given the nickname “Terrible Ted,” due to his interest and practice of taxidermy and his growing of grass in his room. Thereafter, Turner attended Brown University, where he took up yachting and became a master debater. He was later expelled from Brown for violating dormitory visitation rules.

In 1963, Turner’s father committed suicide because of emotional distress over his failing billboard business. When Ted initially inherited the business, he planned to sell it because of the substantial debt it had accrued, but reminded of his father’s legacy, he decided to try to run the company himself. Slowly, he paid off the debts, though many people were sure that like his father, he would also fail at his endeavor. However, within a few years, his father’s business was rebuilt into a successful enterprise.

In 1970, Turner bought a struggling UHF (ultrahigh frequency) television channel in Atlanta. At this time this station was the least popular of Atlanta’s channels because of its barren, uninteresting content. It provided Atlanta with only the ...

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...which these two men were involved. Perhaps in retrospect there is more commonality than differences. It seems inevitable that innovative and successful men and women will stir controversy not only on a local, but on a national level. The larger the persona, the larger the issues and the more people and government may seek to restrain their efforts. It is interesting to contemplate an individual’s achievement without such interventions. These two men serve as examples of how “man’s reach should extend beyond his grasp” and as such the sky may not be the limit.

Bibliography

 Bibb, Porter. Ted Turner: It Ain’t as Easy as it Looks. Boulder. Johnson Books.

1997

 Carr, Albert Z. John D. Rockefeller’s Secret Weapon. London. McGraw-Hill Book

Company, Inc. 1962

 Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. New York. Vintage Books, A

Division of Random House. 1998

 Lowe, Janet. Ted Turner Speaks: Insight from the World’s Greatest Maverick. New

York. John Wiley & Sons. 1999

 O’Connor, Richard. The Oil Barons: Men of Greed and Grandeur. Toronto. Little,

Brown, and Company. 1971