Tucker Carlson Mourns the Passing of His Father, Richard “Dick” Warner Carlson
Right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, a former long-time host at Fox News who has since embarked on his own media ventures, announced on X that his father, whom he regarded as “the toughest person in the world,” has passed away. Richard “Dick” Warner Carlson died at his home in Boca Grande, Florida, surrounded by his children.
Like his son, Dick began his career as a reporter before serving as the U.S. Ambassador to the Seychelles under President George H. W. Bush in the early 1990s. Prior to that, he held the position of Director of Voice of America under President Ronald Reagan.
In his heartfelt tribute to his father, Tucker shared, “Throughout his life, he fervently loved dogs,” and noted that after a six-week illness, Dick “refused all painkillers to the end and left this world with dignity and clarity, holding the hands of his children with his dogs at his feet.”
Born on February 10, 1941, in Massachusetts to a Swedish-speaking mother who was just 15, Dick was placed in an orphanage in Boston. He spent his childhood moving between foster families before being adopted. At 17, he was expelled from school and opted to join the U.S. Marine Corps.
Tucker described his father as “a free thinker and a compulsive reader, even at red lights.” He left behind a library of thousands of books, many dog-eared and filled with personal notes. Tucker reflected that his father’s reading and life experiences led him to believe that God is real and that he possessed an outlaw spirit tempered by decency.
Throughout his life, Dick traveled to various countries, encountering numerous world leaders. Tucker remarked that his father was “a fundamentally nonjudgmental person who was impossible to shock, describing them all with amused affection.”
As a single father, Dick raised his sons alone after their mother left for Europe and chose a bohemian lifestyle. He often took his boys on reporting trips and engaged them at the dinner table in discussions “on topics that ranged from the French Revolution to Bolshevik Russia, PG Wodehouse, the history of the American Indian, and, always, the eternal and unchanging nature of people.”
In 1979, he married Patricia Swanson, an heiress to the Swanson Foods fortune. “They were together for 44 years, all of them happy,” Tucker wrote. “She died sixteen months before he did, and he mourned her every day.”
Richard “Dick” Warner Carlson is survived by his two sons, five grandchildren, and daughter-in-law.
May he rest in peace.
