Nothing could hold John Turner back from finding a way to help others.
Many remember the Penfield resident as a loving husband and father, and a hardworking business owner, as well as for his tireless work with the Water for Sudan project and numerous civic organizations.
He passed away at the age of 81 on Monday, July 25 from brain cancer. He is survived by his wife, Carol, four children and eight grandchildren.
His loved ones call him “an old-fashioned gentleman,” who left little time for himself and was always looking to gain knowledge and use it for good.
“He was kind of a Renaissance man for whatever needed doing,” said his daughter Jennifer Deuel. “He would always tell young people, ‘You’re going to have six different careers in your lifetime, so make sure you keep changing until you find something you’re really passionate about.’”
Mr. Turner owned Cricket on the Hearth, a fireplace, stove and accessories store in Penfield, for 40 years, and kept a desk there after he retired.
He was passionate about many things; his family, country, and his trade. But water — and keeping it clean for everyone — proved to be one of the most telling.
He grew up in the town of Norwich, in Chenango County, where his family had a cottage on Chenango Lake and he developed a lifelong love of swimming and sailing.
Turner spent 12 years in the U.S. Navy, retiring with the rank of lieutenant. He and his wife, Carol, were married in 1952 and settled in Norwich, where he worked at his father’s business, a fireplace manufacturer called Bennett Ireland, Inc.
He later decided to go into retail and in 1969, he and his family moved to Penfield, one year after the first Cricket on the Hearth store opened in Greece. The oil crisis of the early 1970s made the business thrive as customers sought low-cost alternatives to heating their homes.
Mr. Turner operated stores in Buffalo, Pittsford and Perinton before finally designing and building the plaza where the last store still sits, Cliffside Commons, in 1980. The store is now run by two of his children, Charles and Jennifer.
In retirement, he refused to sit still. An active member of the Penfield Rotary Club, he went to friend and fellow Rotarian Robert Smith after reading an article about the countless deaths from disease-ridden drinking water in southern Sudan.
“He said, ‘We just have to do something,’” said Smith.
Mr. Turner then crossed paths with Sudanese “Lost Boy” Salva Dut, who later accompanied him to presentations at numerous Rotary clubs, to raise awareness and support for that cause. Like everything, this was no half-hearted effort.
He joined the board of directors for Water for Sudan in 2006 and was appointed its chief operating officer the next year.
“He jumped into everything with both feet, to make sure it worked,” said Smith.
“John was the kind of person who would do what you wanted him to do because he like you, and he liked anybody who he came in touch with,” said Smith, whom Mr. Turner trained to become vice-COO when he was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2010.
Since he first became involved, the non-profit organization based in Penfield has sponsored drilling more than 100 wells, and helped approximately 200,000 Sudanese people get healthy drinking water, said Christopher Moore, chairman of the board for Water for Sudan.
“He was enthusiastic for our mission, and you don’t see that in everybody,” said Moore. “Once he realized there was something that needed to be taken care of — whether it was big picture or little picture — he would always try to figure out how to help.”
In 2009, Mr. Turner represented the organization at the World Water Conference in Istanbul. But he didn’t stop there. At the age of 80, he and Dut went to Uganda, where they faced militant border patrol, stifling heat and were threatened at gunpoint. Despite these obstacles, they were able to buy equipment, establish a Rotary Club and facilitate their operations.
“He always said, ‘I never did anything I was trained for,’” said daughter Anne Turner. “He figured it out as he went along.”
Whether it was traveling around the globe or encouraging others to contribute to the cause, he didn’t let age or health struggles stop him from reaching out.
A Paul Harris Fellow, director of the Chenango Lake Association, Norwich YMCA board member, and moderator at the Penfield Baptist Church, Mr. Turner had a darkroom in the basement of his childhood home and showed great interest in photography. Recently, he even found time to establish Norwich’s Classic Car Museum.
His family says he was an inventor at heart, and a handyman around the house. In keeping with the theme of water purification, Mr. Turner invented the “Swish-stir,” a mechanism to improve pool filtration, and founded Pantek, a company that used crushed glass to purify swimming pool water and waste water. Wife Carol remembers the surprise she felt on the day he came home with 14 tractor-trailers full of champagne glasses to be crushed.
But like so many of his endeavors, his ambition was tough to match.
Deuel remembers the way her father assembled a television set just in time for the family to witness the moon landing in July 1969. The children, who were pre-teens and didn’t have television, found the moment especially exciting.
“We thought they should see them land on the moon,” said Carol, with a warm smile.
Those who knew Mr. Turner remember not just the work that he did, but the sincerity that came with it. While nothing ever came without hard work, his reaction was always worth the struggle.
“Whether happy or sad, a tear would come to his eye because he cared about something so deeply,” said daughter Anne.
