Meeting Triumph and Disaster

Milton Shedd co-founded history’s most famous oceanarium, forever changing humanity’s relationship to the ocean. Yet SeaWorld was far from his only achievement. Author Conor Friedersdorf vividly recounts an adventurous childhood in 1920s California, a family trying to survive the Great Depression, a young man who snuck behind Japanese lines in World War II — where he penned love letters to his wife — a “hall-of-fame” angler in the style of Zane Grey, and an entrepreneur who shaped the golden age of amusement parks. Friedersdorf presents the fullest-ever account of how SeaWorld began. And he shows how Milt Shedd’s love for the ocean led to the creation of a pioneering foundation dedicated to marine research and conservation. In this narrative of Shedd’s professional and personal lives, Friedersdorf not only engages those of us interested in SeaWorld but tells the story of a man’s passions and how he succeeded in organizing his life around them. As the former chairman and guiding light of AFTCO, we hope that Milt Shedd’s personal family story provides better insight into our company.