Admiral Kurt Tidd

Admiral Kurt Tidd retired after a forty-year Navy career, settling in the Florida Keys and is pursuing new interests and adventures.

He is the son of a destroyerman, brown water sailor, and career Surface Warfare Officer Vice Admiral Emmett H. Tidd and Margaret P. “Muggs” Tidd, both proud Texans of the Greatest Generation; brother of the 25th Naval Chief of Chaplains, Rear Admiral Mark L. Tidd, CHC, USN (Ret.); husband of career military physician Eileen S. Tidd, MD, MPH, FACP; and rightfully proud father of two strong and talented daughters. He is a 1974 graduate of Porter Gaud School in Charleston, South Carolina, a 1978 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and has a Masters in political science from the University of Bordeaux, as a 1984 Olmsted Foundation Scholar.

Admiral Kurt Tidd proudly served with the incredibly talented and professional women and men of all branches of the Armed Forces, the Foreign Service, Federal Law Enforcement officers, and the Intelligence Community. He commanded the destroyer USS ARTHUR W. RADFORD (DD 968), Maritime Task Force 55 and Destroyer Squadron 50, EISENHOWER Carrier Strike Group/CSG EIGHT, U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command/U.S. Fourth Fleet, and military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean as the Geographic Combatant Commander of U.S. Southern Command. He served in a variety of Navy, joint, and interagency staffs, including for the Secretary of the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Joint Staff, and the National Security Council.

Currently Admiral Tidd supports a variety of benevolent organizations and interests. He is the Chairman of the Board at the Olmsted Foundation, a private non-profit organization that provides two years of postgraduate studies at foreign universities in a foreign language for a select number of future military leaders. He is also a Senior Fellow at National Defense University’s CAPSTONE/KEYSTONE/PINNACLE program, mentoring Flag and General Officers and Senior Enlisted Leaders. He recently joined the Advisory Board of the Spirit of America Foundation. Admiral Tidd volunteers his time to support a number of worthwhile causes, including the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, the Coral Restoration Foundation, and Key Dives of Islamorada, Florida’s Reef Clean Up activities. He preserves adequate time to indulge passions including scuba diving, road cycling, and saltwater fishing.