Admiral Kurt Tidd
USN
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 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 served with 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 serves on 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. Admiral Tidd the Board of Directors of the Marine Preservation Society of the Florida Keys, and is a member of the Board of the Islamorada Conservation and Restoration Education (I.CARE) foundation, dedicated to restoring Florida Keys’ iconic coral reefs. Admiral Tidd preserves adequate time to support worthwhile local causes, including Key Dives of Islamorada’s Reef Clean Up activities. He indulges passions including underwater photography, and as a professional recreational scuba diving instructor with Scuba Schools International (SSI).