"You can't even do that right... Can you, son?" - Carter Hedison
Carter Hedison is the Owner and Chief Executive Officer of Hedison Pharmaceuticals and Priority Enterprises, a separate business which covers ownership of minor businesses and properties separate from his pharmaceutical company. Somewhat covetous, manipulative and borderline amoral, he is constantly plotting subterfuges to plunder his foes and their wealth in order to expand his power.
Born in 1917, Carter Hedison is the son of Lincoln Hedison, the son of Franklin Hedison, the son of an unidentified 1860s-era bootlegger who ran guns, ammunition and supplies down from Canada during the Civil War. Carter was raised in a life of prestige and wealth amassed from years of his family's opportunities. The crash of the 1930s hit his family hard, but they relocated to Ashford Falls in 1937 where they rebuilt their fortune with a local bar and saloon and soon opened the first hospital, expanding into real estate. Carter has a sister, Naomi Hedison and a brother he has never named, the two of them not speaking with each other since 1933.
Carter joined the United States Army Air Corp (now the United States Air Force) in 1939 at the start of World War Two. He flew over the Philippines and the South Pacific Islands, getting shot down over Thailand in 1945 and spending the rest of the army under medical leave. After the war, he invested in several businesses, including New World Medicine Group which became the center of his business empire. When he seized control of the company in 1953, he re-named it Hedison Pharmaceutical and relocated the main office to Ashford Falls.
By 1955, Carter Hedison was one of the wealthiest men in New England. Frugal and careful with his fortune, he continued to invest and expand his fortune through other pharmaceutical companies, often stealing away gifted employees or gaining control of potential new patents. In 1958, he finagled a party invitation to a New Year's Eve party at the Winchester Hotel to force an encounter with Philip Martin, owner of the BloMart Medical Company in Albany, who was his rival for a government contract with the military. Although Martin eluded him, Carter encountered hotel heiress Monica Winchester, daughter of Gage Winchester, owner of the Winchester Hotel. Both Carter and Monica started seeing each other afterward, their romance encouraged by her father. They married in 1959, having two children, Blake Hedison and Rachel Hedison.
During their marriage, Carter and Monica had an almost perfect idyllic life with Carter playing the dutiful father while keeping secret the shadier details of his business from her. He also legally adopted Rachel's son, Ty Hedison, from her first marriage, but he cared much more for his own children than he did for his adopted son. Ty frequently lashed out trying to get his attention, burning down the original Hedison Mansion in 1967 and was rebuilt by Monica's father. Gradually, Carter began pulling further and further away from Monica, becoming emotionally distant to her. When Ty removed the bleeder valve from the family limousine, Carter nearly lost his life and retaliated by sending him to the Edmonds School for Wayward Boys in Staten Island, New York. Unable to stop him, Monica abandoned Carter and left Ashford Falls, flying to England where she had relatives, but Carter hired former detective Dash Andrews to abduct Blake back at the airport, his lawyers complicating their following divorce and custody procedures for several years.
Over the years, Carter carried out several legitimate and illegitimate business deals to expand his financial empire. Several of them involved his business rival, Nate Featherstone, as well as ploys to bankrupt Philip Martin. In secret, Blake romanced and eventually dated Caitlin Featherstone, Nate's daughter. The indignation bothered Carter enough to recruit Ty, having escaped the reform school by now, to complicate their relationship and stop it from happening. Rachel also recruited Ty to help her oust her father from control of the company and the estate. With Ty's return, Monica returned to Ashford Falls to protect his rights, but she was in turn charmed and romanced by Martin. Carter's desire now turned to jealousy as well as contempt to ruin Martin who became aware of Carter's hostile takeover of his company through Rachel. Carter then hired Dash Andrews, a former private detective, to frame Martin with illegal drugs. Unfortunately, this attempt failed when Martin surprised Andrews and foiled the plant. Andrews returned later and murdered Martin and Monica Hedison, who he failed to recognize. Slipping into the Ashford Arms Hotel, Andrews murdered both Monica and Philip, staging it as a murder-suicide. The incident ripped Ty apart mentally and emotionally and he was sent back to the hospital. Rachel, meanwhile, linked the murders to her father through Andrews and increased upon her efforts to ruin her father.
During this time, however, Carter was convalescing at the Duffy Medical Center in Albany over a stroke he had experienced. After the stroke, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor that limited his speech and movements and had to have physical therapy. His surgery and medical treatments were carried out by Dr. Thomas Donahue at the center, but during his treatments, Carter had dreams and hallucinations with Rachel as his business rival instead of his daughter and Ty and Blake as her lovers. In the dreams, Monica was still alive and they lived at the Winchester Hotel with Nate Featherstone. The hallucinations continued for several weeks with Blake and Monica murdered in this mental reality and Rachel revealing herself as an "immortal sorceress" determined to destroy him. When Carter came out of his coma as a result of dying in it, he was surprised to discover he had been under it for almost a year. When he awoke, Rachel asked him if he had murdered her mother, and he denied it, but whether he was lying or still under the effects of his dream is unrevealed. From this point on, Carter developed suspicions that she not always had his interests in mind.
Still in and out of the hospital since his recuperation, Carter now had to deal with financial problems in the company and tried selling off the Winchester Hotel which Monica had left to Rachel, Ty and Blake. Unfortunately, Rachel had since altered her mother's will to acquire complete ownership of the hotel which Carter discovered, and he called upon his sister Naomi Hedison in order to convince Rachel into re-opening it, making it equitable again to sell on the market. Naomi, however, drifted from out of his plans by falling for Nate Featherstone instead of finagling the hotel's sale to him through Carter. Finding financing from other resources to save the company, Carter also helped to promote Carl Griggs in the 1991 Mayoral Election of Ashford Falls.
Undergoing heart, lung and liver operations since his coma, Carter next tried to hire biochemist Fletcher DuBois to head his Medical Research Team at Hedison Pharmeceuticals, but the retired scientist refused him at every opportunity. Carter knew Fletcher's patents would increase the value of his stocks in the company and had Ty Hedison harass him from afar for several weeks. After DuBois passed away, Carter turned his focus on his daughter, Janet DuBois, who arrived in town to handle her father's estate. Having supported Nathan Featherstone in his run for mayor, Janet was helped by Nathan to get in contact with industrialist Jack Gates to surreptitiously sell her father's patents to him. Unfortunately, Janet ended up confusing Gates with a New York City TV writer named Jack Gable who Carter likewise believed to be Gates. Somehow aware of the most minute details of Carter's life, Gable ran interference until Gates arrived in town and acquired the patents out from under Carter.
Carter Hedison in 1995
Following Rachel's car accident and subsequent coma, Carter's health declined again and he moved to France to convalesce for several months, romancing Scottish heiress Rebecca Logue and leaving Blake to run the company. In 1995, Carter had lost several pounds and was feeling more healthy than he had felt in years, returning to Ashford Falls to once again endorse Carl Griggs into office. Unfortunately, by now, Hedison Pharmaceutical was now nearing a takeover by the Dynasty Foundation. Distracted between losing his company and funding Griggs re-election, Carter was shocked to learn that the Dynasty Foundation was owned and run by Rachel who had secretly come out of coma some years before. Using evidence from writer William Samuelson, Rachel revealed details of her mother and Philip Martin's murders to the press, the court procedures complicated Carter from fully endorsing Griggs and allowed Rachel to seize the company, as well as let Griggs lose the election to Sabrina Collins.
Found guilty of the murders, Carter suffered a heart attack upon hearing the verdict. With Rachel standing over him, he declared she was never his daughter.
