TURNER COLLEGE SPOTLIGHT

 D. Abbott Turner

The namesake of Columbus State University’s business school – D. Abbott Turner – is an iconic one in Columbus.  Even so, many readers of Turner Business likely know relatively little about his professional and civic life.  Turner was born in Macon, Georgia, on October 24, 1892.  It was not until 1913 that he moved to Columbus, which he did to work as a private secretary for the local manager of Stone and Webster, a Boston-based company that was acquiring water power and electricity generation facilities in riverside cities such as Columbus.  In 1907 the firm purchased the Bibb Company’s Columbus Power Company, which later became part of the Georgia Power Company.  Later in his business career, Turner would serve as a director for Georgia Power.  Four years after his arrival in Columbus, Turner married Elizabeth Bradley, the daughter of W.C. Bradley.  At about the same time as his marriage to Elizabeth, Turner assumed management of the steamboats that were owned by W.C. Bradley.  In 1923, Turner came to the realization that transportation technology was about to change, and he demonstrated his growing business acumen by suggesting that Bradley donate the steamboats to the Columbus Chamber of Commerce.  Bradley followed his advice, and just in time as steamboats soon thereafter ceased to be a profitable means of cargo transportation on the Chattahoochee River.

Over the next 30 years, Turner became president and chairman of the boards of the W. C. Bradley Company and of the Columbus Bank and Trust. Upon Bradley’s death Turner served as executor of his estate.  Turner also served in other organizational leadership capacities, including as a board member for Coca-Cola, Georgia Power Company, the Central of Georgia Railway, and the Bibb Company.  In terms of volunteer endeavors, he served as a trustee for Emory University in Atlanta and Wesleyan College in Macon.  In Columbus, Abbott and Elizabeth were among the creators of the Bradley Center, which provides counseling and mental health assistance. It opened in 1955 and is now part of St. Francis Hospital. A spin-off from the Bradley Center is the Pastoral Institute, which offers educational, training, and counseling programs.  Abbott and Elizabeth were also early supporters of efforts to build the Columbus Museum, which is considered one of the South’s finest cultural institutions, and after Elizabeth’s death, Abbott established the Elizabeth Bradley Turner Center for Continuing Education at Columbus State University.  In addition to many other accomplishments, the Turners had three children, Sarah Louise, William (“Bill“), and Elizabeth Bradley.  Each of them grew up, married, and established their own family lives and careers in Columbus, where they also became prominent civic leaders and philanthropists.

D. Abbott Turner died 40 years ago, on August 11, 1982.  The legacy he built, including the naming of CSU’s business school as the D. Abbott Turner College of Business, is memorialized by a large plaque, including his likeness, in the foyer of the Synovus Center of Commerce and Development on CSU’s main campus.  That this plaque has become the focal point for photographs commemorating graduations, honor society inductions, and other activities important to the life of the business school bearing his name is only fitting. 

Editor’s Note: This feature story relies heavily on the New Georgia Encyclopedia’s account of D. Abbott Turner’s life