Garry Betty, who built the EarthLink Corporation from a struggling start-up into a public company that took on telecommunications giants, died Tuesday in Atlanta. He was 49.
The cause was heart problems associated with adrenal cortical cancer, said Scott Hobby, a business associate and close family friend.
At his death, Mr. Betty was EarthLink’s chief executive, though he had given up his daily duties to pursue medical treatment.
Charles Garry Betty was born in Huntsville, Ala., and reared in Columbus, Ga. He worked his way through the Georgia Institute of Technology with jobs that included selling house siding over the phone. He graduated in 1979 with a degree in chemical engineering.
He worked briefly at Procter & Gamble and I.B.M., and in 1984 became vice president for sales and marketing at Hayes Microcomputer Products, which made computer modems.
In 1989, Mr. Betty was named president of Digital Communications Associates, which made technology to let personal computers talk to mainframe computers. A year later, at the age of 33, Mr. Betty became chief executive of the company.
In 1996, Sky Dayton, the founder of EarthLink, an Internet access company, persuaded Mr. Betty to become chief executive, working in Pasadena, Calif., and returning to his home in Atlanta on weekends.
At the time, EarthLink was adding subscribers at a furious pace, growing 10 percent to 15 percent every week, but was functionally bankrupt, Mr. Betty said last August.
The company borrowed money and, in January 1997, became one of the first Internet companies to go public, a few months before Amazon.com. It built a reputation for customer service and became known as a consumer-friendly alternative to America Online.
“I built the plane, but he was the pilot,” Mr. Dayton said of Mr. Betty yesterday. “He was at once a very strait-laced conservative Southern gentleman who also devoured fantasy books. There were a lot of dimensions to him.”
In recent years, EarthLink has faced considerable challenges as consumers abandon dial-up Internet access, the company’s bread and butter, in favor of broadband access. Mr. Betty pushed the company into new businesses, like offering citywide wireless networks and investing in Helio, a venture with SK Telecom, which provides mobile phone service aimed at young consumers.
Mr. Betty and Mr. Hobby had been working together to create a foundation in Mr. Betty’s name that would focus on using adult stem cells to search for cancer cures.
Mr. Betty is survived by his wife, Kathy Betty, and a sister, Rena Lane.
Another passion of Mr. Betty’s was books. He owned 3,500 first editions and first printings, many of them science fiction and fantasy, and about 10,000 pulp magazines.
In an interview a few months ago, he said he loved stories where “good triumphs over evil.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/technology/04betty.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
