Fox may not want Tucker Carlson, but Bryant Pond does

Woodstock Town Clerk Tonya Lewis talks Tuesday morning at the Town Office about the positive interactions she’s had with Tucker Carlson and his family. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

WOODSTOCK — Tucker Carlson’s go-to-guy in tiny Bryant Pond village learned via a text message from his wife Monday that Fox News had fired his employer.

Patrick Feeney, a carpenter who looks after Carlson’s property in town, said that when he got the message he immediately reached out to Carlson, who is at his home in Florida.

When Carlson got back to him not long after, the well-known television personality told him not to worry about it.

Standing in the doorway of Carlson’s studio behind an abandoned Grange hall Tuesday, Feeney said Carlson told him Fox wanted to issue a mutual statement with its former top anchor. But Carlson refused because the network wouldn’t disclose the reasoning behind its decision.

“’That’s not mutual,’” Feeney said Carlson told him.

Feeney, who has been working with Carlson since 2014, said Carlson told him he didn’t know why he’d been canned. Feeney said, though, that Carlson is rolling with it.

“Tucker did not seem upset or nervous at all,” Feeney said. “I don’t think it’s going to be a hiccup in his life.”

Carlson hasn’t responded to requests from a Sun Journal reporter for comment.

Tucker Carlson’s studio, background, sits next to the Woodstock Public Library. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Carlson’s studio in Bryant Pond, located in a former town garage that Carlson bought in 2020 and Feeney fixed up, appeared to be mostly full of books and memorabilia Tuesday. Feeney said Fox only has a couple of cameras there to shoot Carlson when he’s doing a show in front of a small backdrop.

There were a couple of people working on the set for Fox on Monday, Feeney said, but they didn’t know anything about Carlson’s abrupt departure from the network until Feeney told them.

It didn’t take long before the whole town learned that its most famous summertime resident, a man widely liked in the community, had lost one of the most high-profile jobs in America.

Carlson “is just regular, old folk. He doesn’t act like he’s different than anyone else,” Town Clerk Tonya Lewis said.

Lewis said everybody in Woodstock thinks well of Carlson. To find haters, she said, required a visit to nearby Bethel.

But even in Bethel, Carlson has his fans.

Donna Coe, pumping gas at Breau’s Market in Bryant Pond, said she’s not happy that Fox dumped him.

Donna Coe of Bethel was hesitant at first to talk about Tucker Carlson while filling her vehicle with gas Tuesday morning at Breau’s Too in Woodstock, but decided to speak her mind and not worry about what other people would say. About Carlson’s firing, she said, “I’m disturbed by that.” Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

“I’m disturbed by that,” she said. “They fired him because he is outspoken.”

Coe said Fox shouldn’t try to dictate what Americans hear on television. It ought to let people “make up their own minds” about the issues of the day instead of trying to make commentators like Carlson toe the line.

Feeney said Carlson, who’s been summering in the town since childhood, is much loved.

“I’ve known him forever,” Feeney said.

“He’s very generous, very honest — super honest. Wouldn’t do anything dishonest,” Feeney said.

He said Carlson helps out poor people in town and has even bought cars for people who need one.

Feeney said he’s been working on Carlson’s house on a nearby lake to get it ready for summer use, but he doesn’t know when his employer plans to return to Maine. His primary residence is in Lee County on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

But in this small community in Oxford County, it’s well known that his heart is in Bryant Pond.

In a 2019 letter to Woodstock, Carlson wrote that he’s “spent virtually every summer of my life on Lake Christopher” in Bryant Pond, plans to retire there someday and even has a plot in Lakeside Cemetery in the village beside an 1852 Universalist Church.