At the end of November, EarthLink CEO Garry Betty took a medical leave of absence from his job to fight adrenocortical cancer, a serious form of cancer characterized by a tumor that occurs in the adrenal glands above the kidneys. On Tuesday, Betty died at his Atlanta home from complications of the disease. He was 49.Betty joined the internet service provider EarthLink in 1996 and helped the regional company grow from a provider with 500,000 subscribers into a national powerhouse with more than five million subscribers.
"Garry was instrumental in building EarthLink into the company it is today," EarthLink Chairman Robert M. Kavner said in a recent statement.
EarthLink was just one of Betty's successful ventures. He began his career at IBM Corp. and won the IBM President's Excellence Award in 1982 for his work on the company's personal computer. He also served as CEO of Digital Communications Associates Inc. and at the time became the youngest CEO of a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Betty, who graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1979 with a degree in chemical engineering, was responsible for 2,200 EarthLink employees. And in support of his team, he attended the company's 2006 Christmas party just three weeks after receiving his diagnosis.
"He put on a tux and came out for a night to make all of us feel better," said Mike Lunsford, interim EarthLink CEO. "And he succeeded."
Betty is survived by his wife, Kathy.
