Barbara Carlson's was a life lived large, loud and, seemingly, without a filter.
In a career that boldly swerved from real estate to Minneapolis city politics to the bombast of talk radio, the self-described "broad" often said or acted on whatever came into her head.
In the end, the return of lung cancer she thought she'd beaten four years ago finally did what political opponents and the people she skewered on her radio show never could: Silence "Babs."
Carlson, 80, died Monday, surrounded by loving family and friends. "Right before she died, we were all piled on her bed and she said, 'I wasn't a great mother. But, damn, I was a fun mother,' " Carlson's daughter, Anne, said Monday afternoon.
"Oh my God, I never met anyone like her in my life," said longtime friend Charles Leck, who helped throw a going away party for Carlson at St. Paul's University Club in February after she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
Nearly 300 people — from new neighbors to lifelong pals — were there. "She was always an outrageous person — her entire life," he said. "
Barbara Duffy was born in Anoka, where her father ran the local lumberyard. In a 2017 story that detailed how she'd gone broke after a lifetime of comfort that included live-in help, Carlson said her father treated her lavishly.
"My mother almost died giving birth to my younger brother and was bedridden much of time" during Carlson's youth, she said. "I became my father's surrogate wife. When he wanted to go out to dinner, he'd take me. And we went to nice places where I'd wear white gloves."
