NameRon Swanson
CompanyPawnee Parks and Recreation
CategoryThe Pulitzer Prize
Executive SummaryRonald Ulysses "Ron" Swanson is a fictional character portrayed by Nick Offerman in the NBC comedy-drama Parks and Recreation. He is the former husband of two women by the name of Tammy Swanson and is the current husband of Diane Swanson.
He was Leslie Knope's deadpan superior as the head of the Pawnee Parks and Recreation Department until she left the department to become a city councilor, and then again when she rejoined the department after she was recalled. In late 2014, he quit the Parks department and started Very Good Building and Development Co.
For approximately two years he had a feud with Leslie until it was finally resolved in the episode "Leslie & Ron."
DescriptionWhile at the department, he closed many unnecessary recreational spaces, including the Portola Skate Park, the Grice Dog Run, the Morris-Easton Observatory, the Mohanga Native American Heritage Center, and most public drinking fountains.[2] He is usually non-confrontational and gives Leslie a lot of leeway to run the department. He keeps the shell of a claymore mine (secretly filled with party supplies, he doesn't know this until the episode: Leslie & Ron) and a sawed-off shotgun on his desk, so people who ask for things have to stare down the barrel.
He also enjoys woodworking, breakfast meats, and the works of Ayn Rand.[2] He is also an avid hunter and fisherman and secretly moonlights as a jazz saxophonist named "Duke Silver".[4] His direct superior is the City Manager, initially Paul, then Chris, and finally Ben. Ron has at least one unseen brother, who is an officer in the Air Force. He is shown to have at least three other brothers, Don, Lon, and Vaughn, all of whom worked with him at Very Good Construction and whom he likes to keep private.[5] He also mentioned an uncle who "does yoga" when asked if his family had any history of mental illness. Ron owns a burgundy 1997-2002 Buick Park Avenue Ultra (See Ron's Buick) and what appears to be a 1978-1979 Ford F-100.
Ron starting from an early age loves building things and woodwork, even winning an award for his chairs he makes. He also hates lying to the point he was willing to let Jeremy Jamm win a lawsuit against him if it meant having his witnesses April and Tom tell the truth. The only thing he hates more than lying is skim milk, which he says is water lying about being milk.
Ron also is shown to love unhealthy fatty high cholesterol foods like red meat. Ron will rarely eat ethnic foods but will if it contains "meat" in its name. He despises fish and states it only should be used for sport as it is practically the vegetable of meats. One exception to this is shrimp, which he has described as his “number three favourite food”. Ron openly despises vegetables and vegetarians/vegans alike calling the plants "food that my food eats."
He also says that Vegans are made of glass and had no problem writing his address down when writing a letter to one, as he considers them too weak to be a threat. Ron goes into shock when he does not regularly consume meat in a certain period of time shown when visiting Chris' house where his home was void of red meat, as seen in the episode: Indianapolis. Due to his high consumption of meat and oils, Ron and other Swansons have a very high tolerance for alcohol; therefore, as revealed on Pawnee Today, Ron has never had a hangover, not even after drinking an entire jug of Swanson Liquor in one swig, which is shown to be very strong. He is also revealed to consume one shelf of alcohol a week and usually likes his drinks neat (without ice).
Ron is very patriotic and mocks every other country that is not America. For example, when he was in London, he mocked Big Ben, sarcastically stating that the USA definitely doesn't have any clocks of their own, and refused to use British currency, stating that American Dollars are the most beautiful paper in the world. He also is shown to laugh in disgrace when the country "Canada" is mentioned to him and once tries to pen an angry letter to the country itself, as seen in the episode: Anniversaries.
Ron knows various self-defense techniques and is a very private person. He does not trust technology or give out information about himself, even blacking out his records on Government documents and discarding photos of himself. He even trashed his computer at one point after learning about online cookies and Google Earth and switched to a burner phone so he would not be tracked. In this way, he is very old fashioned.
When Ron has sex, Tom reveals he dresses like Tiger Woods the next day, wearing a red polo and black khaki pants. However, when with Tammy 1, Ron is forced wear a striped lighter blue polo and white khakis with a shaved mustache, showing that Tammy One can neuter Ron into a wimp. Contrarily, Tammy 2 turns Ron into a crazed sex demon as stated by Leslie.
Ron does not trust banks and instead invested and saved his money into a form of gold. He has stashed his gold in multiple locations in which Tammy One tried to acquire, but failed, finding only Ron's decoy gold. While it is never revealed how much Ron has acquired in gold, when writing a will, 5% of Ron's gold managed to shock a lawyer and Ben into disbelief on how great the amount was, even doubting and wondering if he was joking. Ron himself does not know how much money he has, only how many pounds. Additionally, when writing his will, Ron stated that he does not want to spoil his daughters, so he does not want to give them all of his gold; he'd rather have them be hard workers. After a lot of convincing, Ben gets him to write a will. Ron's former will was very short, consisting of some symbols and text stating that his ful