In Memoriam: Tedson Meyers

The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation mourns the loss of Tedson Meyers, who co-founded the Foundation in 1983 and served terms as Board Chairman and Executive Director, and since 2016 as Chairman Emeritus.

Tedson brought the full force of his being to teams he joined. His professional biographies, available on his own website, www.tedson.com list enough triumphs and achievements for many lifetimes. For the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation family, his vision of an organization dedicated to building on the work, thoughts, and legacy of Arthur C. Clarke resulted in the creation of a growing international foundation, the establishment of an Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education, and the launch of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at the University of California San Diego. The Clarke Center has become an integral part of the University and local San Diego community, hosting popular and well-attended events, research, and programs.

Tedson would be the first to acknowledge that he didn’t do it all alone. He had a wonderful and understated capacity to make everyone around him feel special and important. He could coax (and coach) the best performance possible from associates to whom he had invested his trust, without being pushy or dogmatic. Even when he wasn’t in the lead, Tedson was always leading, and always displaying the qualities of a leader.

We invite you to visit this website, www.clarkefoundation.org, as well as www.imagination.ucsd.edu, www.clarkeinstitute.org and www.tedson.com to get a fuller measure of the man we celebrate and honor. There you will find links and references to his other passions – bicycling, the Internet, law, international scholarship and collaboration, the Cosmos Club, for which he led the effort to expand membership to women, senior living initiatives, public service, local politics, equal rights, and more.

Tedson loved a great joke worth retelling, a long story ripe for embellishment, and a pithy saying that captured the essence of a thing. So we offer these seven words for Tedson: “He was noble and he was global.”

We will miss him.

To carry on his passion for young people and the power of imagination, the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation has established in his memory the Tedson Meyers Youth Imagination Fund.  You can donate to the Fund at www.clarkefoundation.org/donate.