Beaufort man ran Ted Turner’s SC island paradise. ‘It was good while it lasted’
A spotlight was placed on the 4,680-acre St. Phillips Island off the coast of South Carolina in 1979 after media mogul Ted Turner bought it.
Working tirelessly behind the scenes was Boogie Tudor of Beaufort. Somebody had to build and maintain Turner’s island getaway. With his wife, Jo, beside him, Tudor was that man. It was backbreaking work, but Tudor was willing and learned to love the challenge, Turner and the island. He took care of both for 38 years.
Boogie and Jo returned to St. Phillips Friday, joining a crew with South Carolina State Parks and the Old Growth Forest Network on a 50-minute boat ride for a ceremony to induct the island into the Old-Growth Forest Network.
It was good to be back.
“When I come on this island, it just hugs me,” Boogie Tudor says.
But the trip was bittersweet for the 76-year-old. The 87-year-old Turner had died only two days prior, on Wednesday, and his memory was fresh as Boogie spoke about managing the quiet island paradise for the famous media personality.
“When he passed, it was like a great door closed in my life,” Tudor said as he stood on the second floor of the “big house” — Turner’s former home overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
Turner: ‘A great guy’
Working on the wild and woolly island, for the equally untamed Turner, was a dream job for Tudor.
The island is known for its thick canopy of 200-300-year-old trees and its silence — except for the sound of the surf and wind. Turner, the founder of CNN, was known as the Mouth of the South. He had a sign in his office that read, “Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.” The motto fit Tudor’s way of doing things, too.
“I started the whole project and managed it for Ted for 38 years,” Tudor said.
Turner bought St. Phillips, located 300 miles east of his Atlanta media empire and 15 miles southeast of Beaufort, in 1979 to protect it from development. It was a retreat for his family and friends before it was purchased in 2017 by the state of South Carolina. Now, it’s managed as part of the better-known and larger Hunting Island State Park 6 miles to its northeast.
Turner hired Tudor to build the road and houses that would be needed for his family to enjoy a tiny portion of the barrier island. Once that was done, Tudor’s job was to take care of the facilities and cater to Turner and his guests when they visited.
Turner, Tudor said, “was a great guy” who loved taking long walks across the entire island, but he had a temper, too.
“He could get a little wound up sometimes,” Tudor said with a smile. “Sometimes I listened. Sometimes I didn’t.”
‘No nothing’
The island had no signs of civilization when Tudor arrived on the scene.
“No dock. No road. No nothing,” Tudor said.
Sometimes, Tudor used a satellite radio to communicate with Turner in his Atlanta office.
For starters, Tudor had to figure out how to get the materials and equipment to the island. Like he was going to war, he loaded much of what was needed, including an excavator, onto a 56-foot landing craft. He had to mind the highs and lows of the tides when he journeyed from St. Helena Island to St. Phillips over and over. The lumber was barged over.
To get a road through the thick forest, a path was cleared using a tractor with a bucket in the front and bush hog in the back.
A three-bedroom house was constructed initially. It took four months to build. Turner stayed at that house until the five-story main house was built over 15 months.
The work was brutally difficult, said Jo Tudor, who was holding down a full-time job and raising three kids while Boogie was working for Turner. When Boogie would arrive home after a day of work, she recalled, “All I could see was the whites of his eyes. He was covered with dirt.”
“It was good while it lasted,” Tudor says. “I made a whole career of it.”
Hurricanes and family meals
Tudor thought Hurricane Hugo would destroy the island’s houses in 1989, but the storm came ashore on the backside of the island and the homes survived. Surviving the island’s mosquitoes wasn’t easy; Jo recalls running for the beach and its breezes to escape the hordes of skeeters.
Turner’s children often ate their evening meals at the guest house, with Boogie cooking local favorites like shrimp, crab cakes and fish on the grill.
When guests visited, Boogie carried the supplies the family needed during their stays on his shoulders, Jo noted. “That’s why his precious back has the issues it does,” said Jo as she placed her hand gently on her husband’s shoulder.
Solar panels and electric generators provided the power. A reverse osmosis system was installed to filter the acidic water.
TV reception a must
But good TV reception was a bigger priority than good water initially.
Turner, the owner of the Atlanta Braves, had to be able to watch the Braves on TBS, and the news on CNN. It did not matter that he was on an island in the Atlantic Ocean, Tudor noted.
In an era before cell phone towers and Starlink, getting reliable service was not as easy as it might seem. A huge satellite dish was shipped in and strategically positioned to receive a signal.
One time, Tudor recalled, he bumped the satellite with a skid loader, which turned the TV reception to snow. Ted was coming to the island the next day. Panic ensued. Turner would be furious. Arrangements were quickly made to have a person bought in to repair the satellite dish.
Then Tudor got an idea. He decided to bump the satellite dish from the other direction, with about the same force as he accidentally hit it the first time. The reception returned, better than ever, and the crisis was averted.
Fateful first meeting
Tudor says Turner was a “mixed bag of marbles” to work for. He would definitely let Tudor know it if he didn’t like something. But Tudor, who has a stubborn streak himself, learned early on if he just went and did a project on his own, Turner would often approve it. Money was never an issue.
“If I didn’t get fired,” Tudor said, “I felt like I was doing OK.”
But Turner was a real family man who always asked where Tudor’s family was if they were not on the island when he arrived. His own family, he noted, was pulled into Turner’s family after he began working for him, Tudor said.
Their first meeting was serendipitous.
Bunky Helfrich Jr. was one of the owners of a Hilton Head Island marina, and Helfrich was part of Turner’s inner racing circle in the America’s Cup sailing competition.
Tudor was working at that boat marina, and Turner was looking to buy St. Phillips Island. It was Helfrich who introduced them.
“He said, ‘Would you be willing to take Ted Turner over to St. Phillips?’” Tudor recalled.
The two men hit it off. On the way back, one of the boat’s motors broke down and Tudor fixed it. Tudor thinks Turner was impressed with his skills. In any event, that initial meeting led to Turner offering Tudor a job to manage his island project.
Job was godsend
The island job turned out to be a perfect fit with Tudor’s temperament and his skill set.
As his wife puts it, Boogie doesn’t play well with others. He jokes that’s why God put him on an island.
“This was a Godsend for me and my family,” Tudor said. “If anybody was going to design a job for me, they could not have done it any better.”
And he wasn’t short on energy. It was no accident that he was named “Boogie.”
“I was like Forrest Gump,” he says of the Tom Hanks character in the movie filmed in Beaufort. “I ran everywhere I went.”
In the early years, Turner used to drive to the Lowcountry from Atlanta. Later, after he had his own jet, he flew into the Beaufort County-run airport on Lady’s Island known as Frogmore International. Turner and his guests would depart St. Helena Island for St. Phillips from Station Creek.
The job was challenging, but also a lot of fun. Tudor retired in 2019 after working for the state a few years after it purchased the island from Turner. To this day he considers accepting the job the best decision he ever made.
“This is paradise,” he said.
