[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 55 (Wednesday, March 26, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1867-S1868]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

                                 ______
                                 

                   REMEMBERING RICHARD WARNER CARLSON

 Mr. BANKS. Mr. President, Richard Warner Carlson died at 84 on 
March 24, 2025, at his home in Boca Grande, FL, after 6 weeks of 
illness. He 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.
  He was born February 10, 1941, at Massachusetts General Hospital to a 
15-year-old Swedish-speaking girl and placed in the Home for Little 
Wanderers in Boston, where he developed rickets from malnutrition. His 
legs were bent for the rest of his life. After years in foster homes, 
he was placed with the Carlson family in Norwood, MA. His adoptive 
father, a tannery manager, died when he was 12, and he stopped 
attending school regularly. At 17, he was jailed for car theft, thrown 
out of high school for the second time, and enlisted in the U.S. Marine 
Corps.
  In 1962, in search of adventure, he drove to California. He spent a 
year as a merchant seaman on the SS Washington Bear, transporting cargo 
to ports in the Orient, and then became a reporter. Over the next 
decade, he was a copy boy at the LA Times, a wire service reporter for 
UPI and an investigative reporter and anchor for ABC News, covering the 
upheaval of the period. He knew virtually every compelling figure of 
the time, including Jim Jones, Patty Hearst, Eric Hoffer, Jerry Garcia, 
as well as Mafia leaders and members of the Manson Family. In 1965, he 
was badly injured reporting from the Watts riots in Los Angeles.
  By 1975, he was married with two small boys, when his wife departed 
for Europe and didn't return. He threw himself into raising his boys, 
whom he often brought with him on reporting trips. At home, he educated 
them during 3-hour dinners 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. He was a free thinker and a compulsive book reader, including 
at red lights. He left a library of

[[Page S1868]]

thousands of books, most dog-eared and filled with marginalia. His 
reading and life experiences convinced him that God is real. He had an 
outlaw spirit tempered by decency.
  In 1979, he married the love of his life, Patricia Swanson. They were 
together for 44 years, all of them happy. She died 16 months before he 
did, and he mourned her every day.
  In 1985, he moved to Washington to work for the Reagan 
administration. He spent 5 years as the director of the Voice of 
America and then moved to the Seychelles as the U.S. Ambassador. In 
1992, he became the CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and 
later ran a division of King World television.
  The last 25 years of his life were spent in work whose details were 
never completely clear to his family, but that was clearly interesting. 
He worked in dozens of countries and breakaway republics around the 
world and was involved in countless intrigues. He knew a number of 
colorful national leaders, including Rafic Hariri of Lebanon, Aslan 
Abashidze of Adjara, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, and whoever runs 
Somaliland. He was a fundamentally nonjudgmental person who was 
impossible to shock, and he described them all with amused affection.
  He spoke to his sons every day and had lunch with them once a week 
for 30 years at the Metropolitan Club in Washington, always prefaced by 
a dice game. Throughout his life, he fervently loved dogs.
  Richard W. Carlson is survived by his sons Tucker and Buckley, his 
beloved daughter-in-law Susie, and five grandchildren. He was the 
toughest human being anyone in his family ever knew and also the 
kindest and most loyal. RIP.

                          ____________________