Former CNN anchor Lou Waters remembers dear friend Ted Turner | National News

TUCSON, Ariz. (KVOA) – Ted Turner, the media maverick and philanthropist who founded CNN, a pioneering 24-hour network that revolutionized television news, has died.

Turner passed away peacefully Wednesday, surrounded by family, according to a release from Turner Enterprises. He was 87 years old.

One of CNN’s original anchors, who calls Southern Arizona home, is remembering the man who changed his life and the industry forever. For 87-year-old Lou Waters, he woke up to a flood of calls after news broke of Turner’s death, a reflection of just how many lives the CNN founder touched.

“You wouldn’t believe the number of phone calls I got this morning,” Waters said.

Back in 1980, Turner launched CNN, the world’s first 24-hour cable news network, at a time many doubted it would survive. Waters was one of the first anchors, recruited by Turner himself, to help build it from the ground up.

“He slept every day for 10 years in his office, he slept on the couch, handed out ideas and spent all his money on supporting CNN’s future,” Waters said.

Waters says Turner believed in the people around him and in the stories they wanted to tell.

“And Ted allowed me to do it, he allowed everyone to do what they did best,” Waters said.

As the man who changed television news is remembered after his passing at 87, Waters recalls the last time he saw Ted, just the two of them in his office, as he was leaving CNN. It’s a moment that still stays with him.

“He spent 90 minutes with me and we talked about it all and at the end he stood up behind his desk, stood at attention and saluted me, so I got up and clicked my heels together and saluted him, we gave each other a hug and that’s the last I saw of him,” Waters said.

Waters says that final conversation is something he still carries with him and a reminder of the kind of leader Ted Turner was.