Carl Turner “was a renaissance man if ever there was such a person in New Mexico,” said Rodger Beimer, who worked with Turner in the 1980s. “He appreciated this state and really loved the people.”
Turner, 87, died Saturday after a yearlong fight with prostate cancer.
Turner served as the first executive manager of the New Mexico Rural Electric Cooperative Association in Santa Fe for exactly 29 years, from one April Fools’ Day in 1960 until another in 1989.
He was pivotal in the creation of the Cumbres and Toltec Sce-nic Railroad. The train runs between Colorado and New Mexico and captures the feel of a late-1800s steam locomotive.
“He loved that little train and spent countless hours of his own time and his own money to make sure that thing grew,” Beimer said.
Turner believed passionately in the role of the Electrical Cooperative and earned a colorful reputation as its manager, traveling all over New Mexico to small towns in need of power.
“We traveled many hundreds of miles on the back roads of New Mexico,” Beimer said. “He loved to do that and he had a story to tell for every one.”
Former New Mexico Gov. Dave Cargo was a good friend of Turner’s and served with him on the board of the Cumbres and Toltec train. Cargo said proudly that he is “the only Republican (Turner) ever voted for.”
“He was a fascinating guy when it came to conversations,” Cargo said. “You could talk to him about a lot of subjects and he was really wellinformed.”
His favorite subject was politics. Turner was born and raised in East Tupelo, Miss., and moved to New Mexico after he and two law students at the University of Mississippi formed their own political party so Democrats in the state could vote for Harry Truman in the 1948 election. Mississippi’s delegates that year had defected to an anti-civil rights party.
“We three were renounced as communists by the press,” Turner told the Journal almost 20 years ago. “Our possibilities of being successful lawyers or in politics in Mississippi at that time were dim.”
So he decided on moving to New Mexico, where he favored the climate and the state’s liberal reputation. He practiced law in Socorro and represented that county in the House for a single term before moving on to run the Rural Electric Co-op. He generated millions in college scholarship money for rural New Mexico students, among many other achievements.
Almost always clad in a red, checkered flannel shirt with holes burned in it from the pipe he smoked, Turner turned himself into a prominent state figure over the last 50 years.
“When he moved to New Mexico in the mid-50s he adopted this state as his own,” Beimer said. “He probably traveled to every corner.”
