Tim Allen Forgives Driver Who Killed Father After Charlie Kirk’s Widow’s Speech
NEED TO KNOW
- Tim Allen is offering his thoughts on forgiveness
- The ‘Home Improvement’ alum, 47, announced on X that he has forgiven the man who killed his father after watching the memorial speech from Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk
- “That moment deeply affected me,” Allen wrote on Thursday, Sept. 24
Tim Allen has forgiven the man who caused his father’s death.
The Home Improvement alum, 72, revealed on social media on Thursday, Sept. 24, that — after watching Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, forgive her husband’s killer last week — he has decided to do the same for the man who killed his dad when he was a child.
“When Erika Kirk spoke the words on the man who killed her husband: ‘That man… that young man… I forgive him.’ That moment deeply affected me,” Allen wrote on X.
“I have struggled for over 60 years to forgive the man who killed my Dad,” he added. “I will say those words now as I type: ‘I forgive the man who killed my father.'”
Allen concluded, “Peace be with you all.”
Taylor Hill/FilmMagic
Allen’s father, Gerald Dick, died in November 1964 while on the way home from a Colorado football game with six children in the vehicle along with his wife, in a collision involving a drunk driver. The man “swerved across the I-70,” went through a median and landed on top of the car, Allen previously shared during a 2006 interview on Inside the Actors Studio. Dick then died in Allen’s mother’s lap, the actor added. Allen was not in the car that day.
“As many times as I’d relive this — if you haven’t had a death in your family, and I don’t suggest it — it certainly, it changes everything from your cells and DNA turns a different color,” Allen said. “Every single thing in my life changed. I knew it the moment he was dead, and it was not for four hours that I found out. I knew the moment that I’ve hated November since then.”
“It was a startling event that took me, it’s made me everything that I am, which I hate to admit,” he added. “It’s also made me very different, I felt, than my neighbors forever.”
On an episode of The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe in April, Allen shared that the “pain” and “discomfort” that came from his father’s death persisted. He remembered him as a “great dad” and the “love of my life.”
The actor’s latest comments about forgiveness come days after the Sunday, Sept. 21, memorial for Charlie, a known right-wing commentator, at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. He was fatally shot at Utah Valley University while he was speaking on Sept. 10. He was 31.
Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old man now being held at the Utah County Jail without bail, has been accused of the crime.
During the memorial, Erika — Charlie’s widow — announced that she forgave her husband’s killer 11 days after he was killed. “My husband, Charlie, he wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life,” Erika, who shares a girl born in 2022 and a boy born in 2024 with Charlie, said.
“Our Savior said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they not know what they do.’ That young man … I forgive him,” she continued. “I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and it’s what Charlie would do.”
“The answer to hate is not hate,” Erika added. “The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”
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Elsewhere during the memorial, President Donald Trump offered a different perspective on forgiveness, telling the crowd that Charlie “did not hate his opponents” and that “that’s where I disagreed with Charlie.”
“I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them. I’m sorry, I am sorry, Erika,” Trump said. “But now Erika can talk to me and the whole group and maybe they can convince me that’s not right, but I cannot stand my opponent.”
Trump concluded by noting, “Charlie’s angry, looking down, he’s angry at me now.”
Credit to Nypost AND Peoples