Ted Turner visits Northern, tours facilities

Billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turner visited Havre on Saturday for Montana State University-Northern's 2011 graduation ceremony, where he gave the commencement speech and received an honorary doctorate.

Havre Daily News/Nikki Carlson

Montana State University-Northern Commencement speaker Ted Turner, chairman of Turner Enterprises Inc., gives graduates advice — "Early to bed, early to rise. Work like hell and advertise" — Saturday morning in the MSU-N gym.

After the ceremony and lunch, Turner was given a tour of Northern's biodiesel facilities, from the garage they use to produce the fuel, through the labs where they analyze it, to the equipment they run on it.

"I think the work here at the biodiesel research center is really terrific," Turner said. "I don't really understand it all, but it looks very interesting and intriguing.

I hope they make some of the progress that they hope to make."

Video of the ceremony, tour and Turner's thoughts can be seen at youtube.com/HavreDailyNews or http://youtu.be/fF1dtz3ikqM.

For the rest of the graduation coverage see Monday's issue of the Havre Daily News.