Jane Fonda Speaks Out After Ex-Husband Ted Turner’s Death

She also noted his passions for nature, hunting and fishing, saying, “I see him in heaven now with all the wildlife he helped bring back from extinction… they’re all gathered at the pearly gates applauding and thanking him for saving their species.”

But of course he treasured his role of father as well, with the Grace and Frankie alum ending her message with an update on the five kids he shared with ex-wives Jane Shirley Smith and Julia Gale Nye.

“Five talented, complex kids who I had the privilege of becoming stepmother to,” she wrote. “I had four stepmothers growing up and I know how important stepmothers can be, so we all did our best to build an extended, rag tag family, and I love them to this day. If it was complicated to be married to him, think how complicated it was being his child. And they are all doing fine.”

And Jane wasn’t the only person to share loving words in the media pioneer’s memory. 

“Ted was an intensely involved and committed leader, intrepid, fearless and always willing to back a hunch and trust his own judgement,” Chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide Mark Thompson said in a statement. “He was and always will be the presiding spirit of CNN. Ted is the giant on whose shoulders we stand, and we will all take a moment today to recognize him and his impact on our lives and the world.”

Eight years before his death, Ted—who established TBS in 1975 before founding CNN in 1980—shared he had been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, a form of dementia in which protein deposits called Lewy bodies impact nerve cells in the brain, affecting thinking, memory and movement, per Mayo Clinic.

“It’s a mild case of what people have as Alzheimer’s. It’s similar to that. But not nearly as bad. Alzheimer’s is fatal,” Ted told CBS News at the time. “Thank goodness I don’t have that.”

However, the billionaire did note that the disease made him feel “tired, exhausted. That’s the main symptoms and forgetfulness.”

Aside from his business ventures, Ted was also a passionate philanthropist, establishing the United Nations Foundation in 1998. 

He was also an activist against nuclear weapons as well as a conservationist, who became one of the foremost landowners in the United States.

And in 1995, he and Jane—mom to kids Mary Luana Williams, 58 and Vanessa Vadim, 57, with ex-husband Roger Vadim, and Troy Garity, 52, with ex-husband Tom Hayden—founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention (G-CAPP).

And just last year, Jane reflected on how the organization “never would have happened if it wasn’t for Ted.”

“It was a very challenging time in Georgia,” the Oscar winner told the crowd at G-CAPP’s November gala. “Had I not been with Ted, this was something, had he not stood by me with his love and support, we never would have survived.”

Though Ted wasn’t present for the occasion, Jane spoke to the impact he’d had on everyone who was.

“He is here in my heart,” she said, growing emotional, “and I know he is here in a lot of our hearts.”