My father never knew Ted Turner. Let's begin today with that obvious factoid.
Dad was a retired International Harvester employee, master woodworker and electrician from Fort Wayne, In., and Ted Turner was ... well, Ted Turner. Multimedia pioneer, professional sports owner, America's Cup champion, Jane Fonda's hubby for ten years. Southern born, southern bred, Atlanta's own.
But they fought the same fight, the two of them. And for one brief moment, Ted provided Dad the ammunition for it, sort of.
Allow me to explain.
See, Ted and my dad both died of Lewy-Body dementia, Dad in 2018 and Ted yesterday, at the age of 86. If you've ever seen it at work close-to, you know Lewy-Body is one hell-borne SOB, little by little erasing a human being's life and taking its time about it. It is, needless to say, excruciating to watch happen; you find yourself searching for any piece of the person you knew, no matter how small and no matter how briefly.
Which brings us back to Dad and Ted.
One day, when much of the man I knew had already vanished, I walked into Dad's room at the memory care unit, and the TV was on. It was tuned to Turner Classic Movies. "The Maltese Falcon" was playing.
Suddenly Dad lifted a gnarled finger and pointed at the screen.
"Humphrey," he said. "Sidney."
Sure enough, there was Humphrey Bogart. And Sidney Greenstreet. And a brief, precious glimpse of my old man, whole and present again.
Anyway, that's my Ted Turner story, on the occasion of his death. Except for this: Along with everything else he was, Ted Turner was the money man who got Michael Shaara's epic Civil War novel "The Killer Angels" onto the screen as a lavish four-hour extravaganza called "Gettysburg."
Which my Dad of course saw, being a former re-enactor whose unit appeared in another Hollywood production ("North and South II"), and a confirmed Civil War nerd of long standing.
Voila: Ted and my old man, on the same page again.
Two men who never knew each other. But two men who somehow, miles and worlds apart, knew each other.
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