‘A soul of service,’ Herald publisher, U.S. ambassador Richard Capen dies at 92

Local Obituaries admin September 17, 2026 0 Comments

‘A soul of service,’ Herald publisher, U.S. ambassador Richard Capen dies at 92

Civic leader Richard Capen, the Miami Herald’s publisher during the city’s turbulent 1980s and later a U.S. ambassador to Spain, died on Sept. 13 at age 92 after a brief battle with cancer, his family said.

“Dick Capen cared deeply about this community, his faith, his family. His was a soul of service,” said his successor as Herald publisher, David Lawrence Jr., who now chairs The Children’s Movement of Florida.

Richard G. Capen Jr., a senior vice president of Knight Ridder Newspapers who joined the Miami Herald’s former parent company in 1979, was named chairman and publisher of the Herald a little before Christmas Day in December 1982. He was 48.

The Connecticut-born Capen took charge a couple of weeks later on New Year’s Day and got busy demanding that Miami do better.

“South Florida is a mess, and we should be ashamed,” Capen wrote in 1985 as the opening sentence in one of his regular columns as publisher.

Known as Dick Capen to friends and foes, the publisher ventured out of his secure glass-cage office that was tucked out of sight in the Herald’s former Biscayne Bay-front headquarters. He drove Miami’s streets at the height of TV’s landmark “Miami Vice.” But he didn’t cruise neon-lit streets and rhapsodize over embellished Art Deco visuals to an MTV-fueled soundtrack.

Capen saw beyond what NBC’s cameras colored and beautified in pastels on Friday night prime time.

“We are drowning in our own litter, and I sometimes wonder if anyone cares,” Capen wrote. “Our expressways are lined with debris, broken bottles and lights that don’t work. A few days ago I counted 53 lights out on the two-mile stretch of I-95 near downtown Miami. One would think that we had gone out of business.”

This wasn’t the 2026 Miami of spotless Ubers and Waymos doing their thing on Brickell streets festooned with billion dollar developments.

“Our taxi fleet remains a disgrace. This, too, contributes to our image of messiness,” Capen wrote in the 1980s, directing his ire and a call for change to Miami city leaders. “When is the last time you saw a brand new cab — anywhere? New facilities — such as Bicentennial Park in downtown Miami — are in sad repair. Even the pigeons stay away from the park’s once-beautiful fountain, which now spills over from neglect.”

During Capen’s tenure, the Miami Herald was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for distinguished editorial writing for a series of editorials condemning the U.S. government’s discriminatory imprisonment of Haitian refugees at the Krome detention center.

Capen’s colleague at the time, Baptist Health South Florida Executive Vice President and CAO Joe Natoli, continued a friendship with the former publisher that was forged in newsrooms and Miami’s changing streets.

“Dick led the Herald during a tumultuous decade for South Florida and did so in the same way he did everything in his life — with passion, energy, positivity and a love and appreciation for people,” Natoli said.

Natoli worked the Herald’s financial side in the 1980s and eventually became its president a few years after Capen went into other national and international roles.

“I remember him calling me, and I’m sure many others, on New Year’s Day just to say thanks for my efforts in the year just past,” Natoli said on Thursday.

Capen’s background

Capen was born in Hartford on July 16, 1934. After receiving a four-year scholarship from the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps, he graduated from Columbia in 1956, his family said. Capen served in the Navy from 1956 to 1959.

“He often credited the Navy with much of his success, grateful for the opportunity it gave him to attend college — an achievement that would not have been possible without the Navy’s scholarship,” his family wrote for his obituary. “He believed strongly in the power of education, sponsoring numerous scholarships in the U.S. and abroad.”

Capen’s career in public service and the newspaper business spanned more than half a century. In 1961, he joined Copley Newspapers in San Diego. In 1979, he was named a senior executive at Knight Ridder and moved to Miami. He’d serve as Herald publisher, guiding the paper through five Pulitzer prizes and helping to launch the Spanish-language el Nuevo Herald until Lawrence succeeded him in 1989.

Federal government roles

Richard Capen’s work drew national attention from the federal government and appointments before and after his time at the Miami Herald.

From 1968 to 1971, Capen served in the Department of Defense as a key aide to President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. Capen received the defense department’s highest civilian decoration: the Distinguished Service Medal, for his leadership on prisoner of war matters, his family said.

In early 1992, having moved to California post-Herald, President George H.W. Bush nominated Capen as U.S. Ambassador to Spain where he led efforts to expand business opportunities and educational exchanges between the two countries, his family said.

His other civic endeavors continued in California as Capen served as an independent director of the Carnival Corp., the American Funds, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and as an independent director for a series of mutual funds managed by The Capital Group Cos.

Capen’s family paid tribute to their patriarch in an obituary.

“A perpetual optimist, Dick’s positive attitude and contagious smile uplifted all who were blessed to know him. He believed deeply in encouraging others, serving his community and country, and, above all, the importance of faith and family. His absence is and will continue to be keenly felt by all who loved him.”

Survivors

Capen’s survivors include his wife of 64 years, Joan Lambert Capen; their three children, Chris Capen, Kelly Capen Douglas and Carrie Capen Hasler; and three grandchildren, Courtney, Collin and Cate.