(triumphant music) - Hello.

I'm Jeff Hullinger.

Georgia has always been the home of Fortune 500 companies Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, and UPS, to name a few.

Arthur Blank, along with his partner Bernie Marcus, founded another of these legendary companies in 1978, Home Depot.

The two would create a home improvement juggernaut and Blank would go on to own two Atlanta sports franchises, as well as numerous philanthropic endeavors.

I sat down with Blank to learn more about the man, his influences, and his legacy.

How often do you sit, day or night, pondering your legacy, not only in this city and state and region, but in the United States as well?

- Yeah.

That's a good question, Jeff.

I actually don't really reflect a whole lot on it.

I still feel like I'm in the middle of living my life and focus on what I've learned in the past, my prior experiences, focus on opportunities that we have today in all of our businesses and our foundation and think about the future.

And, you know, at my age, you could say, well, you shouldn't think that far about the future.

But actually I do think pretty far about the future and think about how we can continue to make a difference in the lives of other people, both in our businesses and through our foundation.

So people sometimes say to me, "Well, why don't you retire?"

I said, "If I retired, what would I retire to?"

I said, "I love what I'm doing.

I'm making a difference."

And, you know, with our guests, our fans, our customers, and our grantees and our associates, and get up every day with purpose, and that's critical.

It's really important to living a full life.

So I feel like I'm in a good place and continue to focus on the next opportunity.

- I found myself reading this about your thoughts on generational money and a term you used, recycling money.

- Yeah.

Well, I think, you know, it's interesting because I'm a member of the Giving Pledge, which was this group that was started by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and a lot of the members of the Giving Pledge, you have to commit to at least giving away half, you have to be billionaire, commit to giving away half of your money, either during your lifetime or have to, in my case, have committed to 95% of it plus.

So I definitely qualify.

But it's interesting that so many of the members of that organization, when you talk to 'em privately, you know, one of their biggest concerns is that, you know, how do we get my next generation?

What happens to my children?

How do I prepare them?

How do I make sure they have the ability to still climb their own mountains and have their own achievements, et cetera, et cetera, and yet feel challenged to make a difference as well?

- Is it difficult to impart that kind of wisdom on children, family?

- Yeah.

- I mean, it's hard enough, as you mentioned, just trying to get your kids on target with their own lives.

- Right.

- But trying to instill these values that are so consequential to the betterment of this community.

- Yeah.

Well, I think the best way to do it is it's fine to chat about it.

I think more often, more importantly, I think it's how you live.

Kids, they watch everything that we do, our children do, and they learn from their parents.

They learn from, you know, siblings, they learn from friends, they learn a lot of institutions they attend, et cetera, but they primarily learn from their parents.

And I think that, you know, I continue to try to make the right decisions for the right reasons and live with those consequences.

And they see that kind of behavior and that sense of responsibility.

And so I think over the years, they've learned that.

They've seen that in their dad and their mothers as well.

- Your family foundation does so much great that we have heard about with the HBCUs recently.

- Yeah.

- But so much of what you do, we never hear about.

And is that the ultimate determinant as to whether something is successful or not?

- I think you make investments and you want to see, are the investments working for the intended people that you're trying to impact?

So I think that, you know, we spend a lot of time in trying to sort out what we understand what our family goals are, we understand what our philanthropy goals are, and making sure we make good grants to great grantees that work closely with those communities.

And we actually can see the results of their work.

- As we all grow older, we become more reflective, who we are and where we have come from.

Do you do that?

Do you think about experiences when you were a boy that sort of helped mold you into who you are as a man and as this enormous life in this country?

- Well, I think it's a great question, and I think, you know, the very clear answer for me is yes, I do reflect on my life and the important people in my life, my family and other leaders and other situations I've been involved in over the years that have had a major impact on reinforcing and molding who I am.

I understand the importance of that.

Also, you know, the weight of that carries forward as it relates to your own children.

You realize that, you know, responsibility we have and opportunity we have as parents to help mold our children or give them the opportunity to be the best of who they would like to be.

But I think you do spend more time reflecting and growing in that way.

What would I have done differently if that situation or some version of that was proposed today?

Would I handle it the same way?

So- - But you don't get lost in the past, do you?

- No, I don't at all.

I mean, I'm too busy to live in the present and the future.

But I feel like I've learned from the past.

I mean, a lot of great successes, some things I would've done differently, would've learned from those things.

- Anybody influence you in the public venue when you were growing up that you looked at and thought, this is the kind of life I would like to live?

- Well, growing up, I was always been a huge sports fan.

So I used to go to Ebbets Field with my father and watch the Brooklyn Dodgers play.

So I could say, well, I wish I was more like Jackie Robinson or, you know, Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese- - Branch Rickey.

- Don Newcombe.

Branch Rickey then, yeah.

I wasn't thinking about that position then, but you know, I say very much on the sports scene, and then I think probably going through college, understanding the impact that Dr. King was having on the world.

A recent friend passed away a few years ago, John Lewis, who you were close with as well, I know, and just a great human being and other leaders who've led with great purpose.

And I have almost said like, you know, my mother had this expression, do the right things for the right reasons to live with the consequences, who actually, people actually live that way and kept making those right decisions and set those examples for us from a moral standpoint, from a leadership standpoint, from a business, from a political standpoint.

And I just, you know, I look at, if I can pick on somebody today, like Senator Nunn, who's a dear friend.

- Right.

- And spent so many years in the US Senate with great leadership, but you know, he spent so many years crossing the aisle and walking across and making friends with Republicans and understanding issues- - Just great moral clarity too.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

And understand what's right and what's wrong and let's focus on the population that we're serving, not on, you know, political barriers.

And the best analogy that I can give you from that standpoint and from a personal standpoint, to get back to your earlier question about what troubles me about America today, is that in a football sense, our game used to be played between the 30 yard lines, you know, 30 to 30.

And now it's being played to the left between the goal line and the 30 and the right between the goal line and the 30.

And so, you know, to me that's very dangerous.

And it troublesome to me because when you're doing that, you're not close enough and interconnected enough with the other side of the team where you could actually hear and what they're saying and what they're feeling.

And I think the great political leaders in the history of our country and great business leaders have always been really good listeners first, and have always had a thirst for knowledge, a thirst for understanding where are people coming from, whether it's a business opportunity, how do I serve 'em better?

Or a political situation is that, how do we bridge this gap so we serve our population better?

And I think that that's something that troubles me so much that I just don't see that kind of leadership today in our country.

- Is there one moment as an adult when you said to yourself, "You know, I'd like to own an NFL team?"

- Yeah.

I would say when I left Home Depot, which was in 2001, I'd been a club seat holder for the Atlanta Falcons for a number of years.

And you were announcing, so, I mean, I'd go to a million games and what have you, and we'd win one, lose one, win one, lose one.

It was every, you know, and so, you know, I left Home Depot and through a very dear friend of mine who's passed away now, John Williams, who was the founder of Post Properties and great RERT and what have you, but John introduced me to the opportunity of potentially owning the Falcons one day.

And, you know, I was busy.

He was running this company and, you know, et cetera.

So we didn't take it seriously.

Then it turned out circumstances developed and Rankin Smith passed away, developed a relationship with Taylor, and the family opportunity came.

So when I had that opportunity presented to me, I kind of said, "Well, I could sit on the sidelines for the next 30, 40 years of my life and just complain, or I could try to buy the team and try to fix it."

So, you know, we obviously had an opportunity, we went ahead and bought the team and I fixed it.

The last half a dozen years haven't been what we have wanted them to be for sure.

- Has it been worth it?

- Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean- - No regrets on that at all?

- No, absolutely not.

I mean, forget about, you know, financially and all that, but that's really secondary.

But most importantly, I think we've been good stewards for the franchise and for the Atlanta community and for the NFL.

And it's been great fun for myself.

And now I have, you know, two of my children, two of my middle boys both have an interest in the NFL and the Falcons, and that'll be great to see.

But to see whether it be soccer or there'll be football, when you bring together 60, 70,000 plus people in a building and you see that sense of joy and that community and that connection with each other, it's a beautiful thing to be part of that and feel like you've helped create the atmosphere for that.

So we always wish we could win on the pitcher on the field.

Can't always do that.

We're challenged, obviously, at the moment, but, you know, we will figure that out and we'll get better.

But really, it's been a great joy for me and for my whole family.

- And golf has now- - Yeah.

- Become a very big part of your life too.

- Yeah.

- Your financial life.

- Most folks in Atlanta don't realize our PGA Tour Superstores, which are in basically two-thirds of the country today, are the largest specialty golf retailer in the world today.

We'll probably reach the billion dollars in volume in the next couple of years.

We are an owner of one of the TGL teams, which is one of the new ventures with the PGA Tour, its players and investors on golf simulation.

That league was supposed to be launched in January.

We had construction problems.

It'll be launched next fall during late, probably fall in the winter.

We're happy to own the Atlanta Drive Golf Club and looking for other ways to participate and support the tour as well.

So we love golf.

I'm not very good at it.

I was never good at it, but I've always enjoyed it.

I've always enjoyed being outdoors and the social aspects of it, et cetera.

So it's a great sport.

- One of your close confidants told me recently that the amazing thing about you among many things is you never, ever lose your edge or your desire to succeed, that you can expect those phone calls from Arthur Blank- - [Arthur] Yeah.

- At any hour of the day or night, and you better answer them and you better have answers.

- Well, I would say that by and large, that's a true statement.

I don't call people in the middle of the night, though.

I mean, I'll write notes in the middle night sometimes, I mean, sometimes to myself, sometimes to others, but, you know, it's an expression that good is the enemy of great.

So it's another expression which I got from Phil Knight many years ago, the founder of Nike, as you know, "There is no finish line."

So I think that as good as we are in everything that we're doing, and you know, I think generally very successful business-wise and certainly our foundation as well, we get up every day and try to figure out, I mean, how do we get better and where are the opportunities?

And that gives us all purpose.

And I think no matter what people do, and I have friends who say to me, "Well, you should retire."

I said, I mean, mentioned this earlier, "Retire to what?"

So I have people who do retire and they retire to actually not do a whole lot.

And what they find almost universally is that their mind goes, then their body goes, or their body goes, then their mind goes, some mixture of the two.

So I think it's important, whether it be for a business, myself personally, for all of us collectively, to get up every morning and have purpose to be alive, and not just purpose individually.

Like you may say, well, purpose for me to just be alive today, that's in and of itself, but a broader purpose.

You know, how do I serve my community?

How do I serve my family?

How do I serve everybody in my circle of love?

How do I serve humanity?

And I think that's what gives us all energy to keep on getting up every day and finding new challenges, new opportunities.

And just like John Lewis was sitting in his libraries named after him, remember telling me, and you probably heard the same thing, Jeff, John would get up virtually every day and look at, you know, scale the world or look at the map of United States and he'd always want to go, where's the hottest spot?

And that's where I should be.

Where's the hottest spot?

And doesn't mean you can be there every day, but it means I should be focused on where's the greatest need, where's the greatest opportunity?

And I very much have always lived that way.

You know, what's the greatest need?

Where's the greatest opportunity?

That's where I want to spend my time and my effort.

- You told me in September that you had recently had lunch with Mr. Marcus.

- Yeah.

- I think a lot of people are always curious about your relationship.

- Number one, I miss Bernie.

I mean, Bernie and I worked together every day for half of my adult life.

And we had lunch together, I would say, half of those days we had lunch together.

And it's only when Home Depot got so big that we both spread in different directions.

We couldn't quite do the lunch thing together every day.

But he's been important mentor in my life, an important partner, important friend, kind of a mixture of a father, brother.

He's 14 years my senior, so I lost my dad when I was 44.

So he was always kind of like a little bit of a rabbi to me in certain ways, but also a very close friend, dear friend.

So we went through, been through life together.

So his relationship was very, very important to me.

It'll always be.

- Are you worried at all about Atlanta's future or the state's future?

- Well, I mean, I would say I'm worried more about the state of our country, to be honest, Jeff, and Atlanta and our state is certainly part of that.

I mean, during my lifetime, at least during my adult lifetime, I've never seen the country as divided as we are experiencing today.

And I think that, you know, that worries me greatly, both for our country, and it worries me on an international basis as well.

I think we need to focus, find political leaders, business leaders, et cetera, that focus more on how do you bring people together, how do you focus on all the things we share in common, common desires, goals, purposes, and find ways to be good listeners and to be able to cross aisles in a political sense or understand where other people are coming from before we are trying to impose our feelings on somebody else, if you will.

So I think Atlanta, you know, I moved here, there was less than a million people living in Atlanta.

Greater Atlanta area is over 8 million now, and state's grown beautifully as well and we have great leadership.

There's always issues in terms of balance.

In Atlanta, I would say specifically the gap between the have and the have nots continues to be too large, in my opinion.

And we have to continue to work on those efforts to kinda level the playing field and giving people an opportunity to have the full lives that we all want for ourselves and our families.

- Blank retired from the day-to-day operations at Home Depot in 2001, and continues his philanthropic work through the Arthur M. Family Blank Foundation.

Perhaps no one is more responsible for putting the city of Atlanta on the world stage than Ted Turner.

His Turner Broadcasting and Cable News Networks were beamed into homes all across the globe.

Often brash and impulsive, he was sometimes referred to as the Mouth from the South, but his instincts and his keen business sense revolutionized the way that people got their news, watched entertainment, and discovered the world around them.

(inspiring music) - [Pamela] Media mogul and peace activist.

- Until I met Ted Turner, I thought one of my previous bosses, Lyndon Johnson, was the most complex person I'd ever known.

But Ted, by far, the more complex, most complex man I've ever known.

- [Pamela] Champion sportsman and warrior for the environment.

- His ability to inspire people around him was every bit part of the genius.

- [Pamela] An opinionated straight talker, dubbed the Mouth of the South.

- Whatever Ted Turner thought, that came out of his mouth.

I used to say, "Why don't you take one at a time?"

- I just thought was kind of an opportunist.

And I just went through life trying to take advantage of opportunities as I saw them.

- [Pamela] Robert Edward Turner III was born November 19th, 1938 in Cincinnati, Ohio.

When he was nine years old, the family moved to Savannah, where his father built a successful billboard business.

- To prove his worth to his father I think was always sort of something that was deep inside of him.

- [Pamela] A weight made heavier by the 1960 death of sister Mary Jean of lupus and his father's suicide three years later.

Turner was just 24 years old.

- Ted began to question lots of things, including, you know, what kind of God would take my sister?

What kind of God would cause me to lose my dad at this important pivotal time in my life?

- [Pamela] After his father's death, Turner took over his business.

In 1970, he embraced broadcasting, buying Atlanta's struggling UHF television station and taking it national.

- Many people figured it was absolutely destined to fail, but I think it was the sort of the first indications of Ted's genius and the ability to see out over the horizon and understand change.

- [Pamela] Within three years, Turner Broadcasting System, or TBS, was profitable thanks to family-style programming like wrestling, sports, and comedy.

- So he was on nationwide television airing.

So they got a lot of coverage.

Everybody knew about WTBS in Atlanta.

- [Pamela] A precursor to Turner's next innovation that would change the world.

- I dedicate the news channel for America the Cable News Network.

- [Pamela] On June 1st, 1980, CNN became television's first 24-hour all-news station.

- It was clear to many of us that CNN especially was a major, major breakthrough, that it clearly was very different.

- [Pamela] Initially derided by competitors as the Chicken Noodle Network, by the mid-1980s, CNN was available in 100 countries.

- I said, "Ted, what are your rules about news?"

And this applied during my 11 years.

He said, "Tom, one rule, one rule.

Be fair."

I said, "What else?"

He said, "That's it."

- [Pamela] Appearing in GPB'S 2003 "Ted Turner: A Conversation," Turner explained his passion for journalism's power to make society more fair and more free.

- You know, we live in a democracy here, and there's a lot of talk, and very appropriately so, about how important democracy is in the world.

But in order for democracy to work properly, the citizens have to educate and inform themselves about important issues so that they can ask and demand from our elected leaders the course of actions that we want to take.

- [Pamela] Turner also understood the impact of sports on society.

The avid sailor won the America's Cup in 1977.

When Western countries boycotted the 1980 Olympics and protest of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, Turner founded the Goodwill Games to keep international athletes competing.

- Ted had seen President Carter pull the United States out of the Olympics.

Ted felt sports was so important that he created a great expense, the Goodwill Games.

- Ted, you know, started the Goodwill Games.

- [Pamela] Right.

- [Xernona] And he wanted everybody's participation.

- [Pamela] When the 1996 Olympics were granted to Atlanta, the city was already known internationally, thanks in part to Ted Turner.

- Maynard Jackson told me that he went about with Andy Young in Africa and told people that he was from Atlanta, talked to all these people, and the only thing they knew about Atlanta was Coca-Cola and CNN.

He said he went in and met with members of the Olympic committees around the world, seriously, and that they knew about Coca-Cola and CNN.

(baseball theme song plays) - [Pamela] Americans knew Atlanta for the Atlanta Braves.

They had been watching Braves games on TBS since Turner bought the team in 1976.

(crowd cheering) When the Braves won the World Series 18 years later, the squad from Atlanta had become America's baseball team.

- You know, he didn't know anything about baseball.

He didn't know the rules when he bought the team, but he knew the product.

- [Pamela] Owning the Braves helped Turner be more sensitive to Americans' racial and cultural differences.

(upbeat music) When CNN's first Black female executive objected to seeing him do the tomahawk chop, he apologized publicly.

- Here comes his PR staff to my office, and they closed the door, which was unusual.

And they had pads and pens set.

Mr. Turner told us to get with you and write a statement and apologize to the Native Americans, that he will no longer do the tomahawk chop.

And that's what happened.

- [Pamela] Turner's sense of responsibility to society deepened during his decade-long marriage to actor Jane Fonda starting in 1991.

- But I can tell you what Jane Fonda told me, and that is, is that Ted knew at some deep inner level that in order for him to save himself, he needed to try to save the world and try to make conditions better for other people.

- All this money's going to programs.

They're all gonna be UN programs.

- [Pamela] In 1997, he stunned the world, announcing a $1 billion donation to the United Nations.

- He wanted to pay America's dues to the UN 'cause they hadn't paid it for a couple of years, and he was gonna pay it personally.

Found out that you couldn't do that, but that you could form a foundation, the United Nations Foundation, that could give some support to the programming of the United Nations.

So that's what he decided to do.

- [Pamela] Four years later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he tapped Georgia US Senator Sam Nunn to launch the Nuclear Threat Initiative to reduce nuclear proliferation.

- We've got to start acting globally, like civilized, educated, decent, kindhearted human beings.

And we have to trust each other.

We have no choice but to trust each other.

We can't live in a world where nobody trusts anybody because then we'll never make progress with these weapons.

- [Pamela] For Turner, helping humanity also meant taking care of the environment.

He became North America's second-largest individual landowner with 2 million acres, preserving Western wilderness and restoring the American bison population.

Through his foundations, Turner's five children continue his legacy of giving back.

- They all have different talents and they all are trying those to bring to philanthropy.

It's remarkable and I think it's become more poignant over time and now the grandkids are involved in this as well.

- Ted Turner will be memorialized around the globe for his contributions to journalism, peace, the environment, and serving humankind.

Those who knew him will remember the hard-driving, tireless innovator who first changed the world and then tried to save it, a billionaire maverick who invited people to just call him Ted.

- Ted was magnetic.

People wanted to attach to him.

They wanted to be part of what he was doing and achieving.

He was exciting.

- He was open and honest, and even when he was wrong, he would apologize.

- If you're around Ted Turner, it is impossible to not be inspired.

There aren't many Americans that I know who have ever been like Ted Turner.

- Look at what he was able to win.

I mean, this ability just to win and to do what it takes to win.

- I think that I've done pretty much the best I could in my life, and I've had a wonderful life.

I've been a very blessed, a very blessed person, and I did the best I could.

- [Pamela] Pamela Kirkland for Georgia Public Broadcasting.

- Turner, who announced publicly in 2018 that he was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, retired to Montana to live on one of the 14 ranches he owns that are spread across the Western US.

For "Georgia Legends," I'm Jeff Hullinger.

Thanks for watching.

(triumphant music)