Warren Carlson made his own way

As a fresh graduate of Minneapolis West High School, Warren Sheldon Carlson bought a used yellow cab with $68 of paper route money and drove it to the West Coast with friends. The 1941 cross-country adventure became the first act of a multifaceted, entrepreneurial life for Carlson, a businessman, electrical engineer and WWII veteran who died June 26 at age 87.

Carlson, whose brother Curt would go on to build Carlson Companies Inc., shared the family's business sense, developing campgrounds, a forestry business and a string of affordable housing projects around the state while raising eight children with his wife of 52 years, Jane Madden.

Speaking of her father's intellectual curiosity, daughter Susan Carlson Leyendecker said "he was interested in everything. When I [recently] looked at the books by his bedside, he had a North American bird book, he had an Economist magazine, he had some notes on the BP oil spill, of what the damages are going to be." A day before his death, Carlson finished an article on foreign tax credits that he asked his son Robert to submit to the Economist, said Leyendecker.

The youngest of five children, Warren grew up in the Morningside neighborhood of Edina, where his parents ran a grocery and bakery. His cab adventure took place just as WWII reached the United States, and Carlson soon found himself serving in the Navy as a radar technician in the South Pacific. He was discharged four years later, earned a University of Minnesota electrical engineering degree and married a Hopkins girl, Jane, whom he had known since they were both teenagers.

He joined his brother Curt's Gold Bond Stamp Co., an early supermarket loyalty program, and rose to the level of vice president. He wrote in a 2002 letter to his children that he viewed those years as a thrill and a privilege, but resigned in 1968 after a disagreement with Curt about the company's restructuring. The company eventually grew to a multi-billion-dollar empire. "Undoubtedly, I was wrong," Warren went on to write. In 1977, Curt backed Warren in the development of two affordable housing projects. Warren then went on to develop 18 more projects spread across the state, creating his Cepco Management and Development Co., which his children inherited.

Carlson was preceded in death by his parents, four siblings, wife Jane in 2000 and son Paul. He's survived by eight children.

"He lived every moment of it," said Leyendecker, speaking of her father's life. "We all wish we could be half the person he was."

Matt McKinney • 612-217-1747