Friday, February 29, 2008

William F. Buckley: A Coda

William F. Buckley's professional achievements were well-known and well-documented long before his death on Wednesday at 82. What has struck me most about the tributes and remembrances to him over the past few days, however, is how much they concentrate on his personal achievements; his grace, gallantry, and generosity, and his large capacity for friendship. Below is only a smattering of the hundreds of such comments I've read about WFB over the last two days:

"I know only a fraction of his many kindnesses. But even I know of people who were able to buy a home because Bill put up the down payment or to put a child through school because Bill helped with the tuition; people who remember terrible times in their lives when William F. Buckley seemed to be the only friend who hadn't abandoned them. All in all, not a bad ticket to carry into eternity." - William McGurn

"I had known only his cool, sometimes aloof public persona for years when I nervously met him for the first time at some forgotten function in the mid 80s. I said to Catherine when I got home, in amazement, "But he's a sweetheart!" Utterly unpretentious, absorbed in whatever you had to say, he had the kind of manners that are so good that they cease being manners and become a warming aura. Yes, I know he changed the world, and I'm glad about that. But what so often occurred to me in his presence was that I was talking with an extraordinarily good man." - Charles Murray

"Bill had the capacity to make everyone feel that they enhanced his life. If you ran into him on the staircase, he would make you think that you had just capped his day. It need hardly be said that few men are great. But even fewer great men are so good. I weep." - Mona Charen

"Bill Buckley was the quintessential American gentleman." - John Derbyshire

"Bill Buckley was the most gracious and generous man I have ever known." - Kate O'Beirne

"When Jackie Onassis died, a friend of mine who knew her called me and said, with such woe, 'Oh, we are losing her kind.' He meant the elegant, the cultivated, the refined. I thought of this with Bill's passing, that we are losing his kind--people who were deeply, broadly educated in great universities when they taught deeply and broadly, who held deep views of life and the world and art and all the things that make life more delicious and more meaningful. We have work to do as a culture in bringing up future generations that are so well rounded, so full and so inspiring." - Peggy Noonan

"What I will remember most about him was the fact that he was the most well-mannered man I’ve ever met. He understood that manners are those things you do to make others feel welcome. The largeness of his soul amazed me." - Jonah Goldberg

"He knew well that he was the most important person in my life after the two people who had actually given me life. I will cherish hundreds of memories of his boundless acts of generosity, which changed my life forever." - Larry Perelman

"Buckley’s greatest talent was friendship. The historian George Nash once postulated that he wrote more personal letters than any other American, and that is entirely believable. He showered affection on his friends, and he had an endless stream of them, old and young. He took me sailing, invited me to concerts and included me at dinners with the great and the good. " -David Brooks

"His passing is a reminder to us, not only of the happiness found in good work for good causes, but in the gifts man is capable of bestowing to the world when blessed by God. Bill Buckley was such a man, and it was my blessing to know him." - Bill Bennett

"In public life he was a witty, devastatingly effective spokesman for conservatism and the founder of National Review, one of the most influential political magazines of the twentieth century. In private life he was considerate beyond compare, a charismatic host with a magical gift for putting his guests at ease and a passionate amateur pianist who played Bach with fair skill and much love....[a]t some point I will sit down and reread Cruising Speed: A Documentary, my favorite of his five dozen books and the one that best conveys his personality. But not yet: right now I want to think of him not as the great public figure he was but as the charming, funny man who once upon a time was unstintingly kind to an unknown young writer.

"I thought the world of him, and I cannot imagine the world without him." - Terry Teachout

"In illness, he became, if possible, even more gallant. At a party he gave a while ago to celebrate the publication of his brother Jim’s memoirs, he spoke with his usual wit, warmth, and eloquence—but seated on the stairs. He apologized for his ridiculous position, as he called it, explaining that he didn’t feel well enough to stand and would now go back to bed. Not so long afterward, he replied to the condolence note I had sent when his vivid and unforgettable wife Pat died. Its whole point was to make me feel good, an act of gracious generosity that, under the circumstances, took my breath away.

"When I heard of his death this morning, a phrase of Edmund Burke’s popped unbidden into my mind: “the unbought grace of life.” Many will write, in due course, about Bill’s towering importance in our nation’s political and intellectual life. But beyond that, his whole being provided an answer to that ultimate question, How then should we live? From first hearing him speak at my high school when he was a young man, through watching him in sparkling, imperious, and rather intimidating action as his guest on Firing Line, I saw his character become ever more clearly the unmistakable, irreplaceable Buckley: witty, cultivated, playful, urbane, gracious, brave, zestful, life-affirming, tireless, and gallant—the incarnation of grace. He taught many not only how to think but also how to be." - Myron Magnet

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