Thanks, Bill, for the memories--and for so much more
02-29-2008
By David Franke
Editor
UltimateRonPaul.com
Friday, February 29, 2008
Bill Buckley died Wednesday, but his legacy lives on and thousands of his admirers are voicing their sorrow in eulogies and emails to their friends. This is also a time for refreshing our memories of how the founder of the conservative movement impacted our lives.
I was one of the lucky few who worked for WFB, or WFB Jr., depending on which shorthand you preferred for William F. Buckley Jr. (And note, no comma before “Jr.”) If you are too young to have been present at the creation of the conservative movement—and most of you are—you may wonder what all the fuss is about. I invite you to go to www.ConservativeHQ.com and find out.
You will find plenty there about Bill’s founding of National Review, his early books on Yale and Joe McCarthy, his unsurpassed (to this day) television show, “Firing Line”—all of which scandalized the Liberal Establishment, even as it gave a home to the thousands, then millions of Americans whose concerns and aspirations he was voicing. I also urge you to read Chapter 5, “The Birth of a Movement,” in America’s Right Turn (by Richard A. Viguerie and yours truly).
I won’t duplicate that history here. Rather, I’d like to tell you how he affected the life of a 21-year-old Texas kid who reported for duty one day in 1960 to his office at 150 East 35th Street in Manhattan. Thousands of us have stories about our encounters with Bill Buckley. This is mine.
Present at the creation
Bill Buckley was my hero long before I met him. I had been converted to the cause of individual freedom and anti-communism, quite literally overnight, when I read John T. Flynn’s The Road Ahead while in junior high school. In high school I survived attempted brainwashing by devouring the pamphlets of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (ISI) and the two publications they sent me as student gift subscriptions—Human Events, at that time an eight-page Washington newsletter, and a fortnightly magazine, The Freeman. Those two publications exposed me to a wide variety of exciting right-wing dissidents—including Bill Buckley in The Freeman.
I was circulating petitions, writing letters-to-the-editor of the Houston Chronicle (and having them published—quite exciting for a high school student!), and communicating by snail mail (no email back then) with a vast nationwide network of fellow McCarthyites—Joe, not Gene, of course. Somehow one of my student petitions got published in The Freeman, and in the mail soon afterwards came a letter postmarked Sharon, Connecticut, with my name and address typed out in red ink.
I asked myself, who do I know in Sharon, Connecticut? Well, the masthead of the letter inside read “Libertarians for…” something or another, or perhaps it was “The Libertarian International.” Whatever, this “organization” apparently was run by two brothers, Reid and William F. Buckley. They exhorted me, in red ink again, to keep up the fight, while warning me, “You will be called a fascist, a hate mongerer,” etc. etc. with lots of exclamation points.
(I really do have to find that letter somewhere in my boxes of “files,” frame it, and place it above my desk.)
I went off to a college by the beach in South Texas as a music major. But then, in my freshman year, Bill Buckley launches National Review. I had an ISI gift subscription and was so excited I changed my line of studies to history and political science, and became editor of my campus newspaper in my sophomore year. So Bill Buckley, long before I met him personally, was largely responsible for my becoming a professional writer rather than a professional musician.
Under my editorship, The Foghorn of Del Mar College may have been the second conservative campus publication in America, though I have to admit that the Yale Daily News under Bill Buckley’s tutelage had more cachet (this is called understatement). We didn’t use the word “networking” back then, but that’s what I was doing, sending my editorials to Bill and the folks at Human Events and anyone else who wouldn’t send me a bomb in return.
A year later, Human Events offered me a work-scholarship, and I became the first student in the very first Human Events journalism class led by M. Stanton Evans (Doug Caddy and Bill Schulz were the other students). It was during these years in Washington (1957-1960) that we first began hearing and sometimes using the term “conservative.” And this was when roommate Doug Caddy and I started the first nationwide conservative activist organization, the National Student Committee for the Loyalty Oath. Thanks to publicity in Human Events and National Review, we were amazed to hear from hundreds of conservative students across the country when we thought we were pretty much alone in the liberal wilderness. The National Student Committee begat Students for Goldwater for Vice President which begat Young Americans for Freedom…but I digress.
Also during these years, Bill Buckley was launching his public persona as the scourge of the Liberal Establishment. The prototype conservative movement had plenty of good people doing good work, but none caught the public’s eye like Bill Buckley, with his wit and charm and eloquence. In him we finally had someone who could stand up at the lecture podium to the likes of John Kenneth Galbraith and make him look like the intellectual inferior he was! So I was elated beyond words when I was offered the position of Editorial Assistant to THE Man.
At the center of the conservative universe
You can imagine—no, you cannot imagine—how nervous I was to enter the inner sanctum of National Review and work directly for the Most Important Man in the Conservative Universe. Remember, I was only 21 and just a few years out of the sagebrush, plopped into the very heart of Gotham. But if anyone could put you at ease, it was Bill and his sister Priscilla, the managing editor of National Review.
I was surprised when they introduced me to my work quarters. It would be an exaggeration to call it an office—more a cubbyhole, barely big enough for a small desk table with typewriter and some shelves. Any apprehension evaporated when I learned that my predecessor occupying these quarters was Whittaker Chambers. And I was a poster boy at that time for the World Hunger Campaign, so if rotund Chambers could work in there I should have no problem. As they soon told me, both Whittaker Chambers and I had an ability to pack more newspapers and assorted “files” into that cubbyhole than anyone thought possible.
When a groundbreaking magazine makes history, as National Review in retrospect did, it’s a natural tendency to think you worked there during its Golden Age. And I do. Certainly it would have been exciting to work there at launch, but the early 60s were the buildup to the Goldwater campaign, when the new conservative movement was first beginning to think big and dream big. Bill Buckley’s National Review was the epicenter for both the intellectual side of the movement and the political strategy side of the movement.
An editorial table in Bill’s office suite served as our gathering spot for handing out the next issue’s assignments, evaluating them before deadline, and engaging in general discussion during our weekly editorial luncheons. We were all equal in having our say, but naturally some were more equal than others in having their ideas accepted, and Bill was The Decider at that table.
The intellectual giant at the table was James Burnham, really one of the three great political philosophers of that era, the others being Sidney Hook and George Orwell. (Frank Meyer’s editorial power was diminished by his being a nonresident, ensconced in the Catskills.) If there was divided opinion on an editorial matter, Bill would usually—but not always—side with Burnham. If you’re a fan of “The McLaughlin Group,” you know the routine. John McLoughlin will make the rounds of his TV panel, seeking their responses, and then pronounce, “The answer is…”
And you never knew who might join us for lunch. One week I’d sit down and the person to my right, passing the sandwich platter, would be the comedian and TV host Steve Allen, making his case for disarmament. (Not accepted.) Another time it would be a couple of scientists employed by the tobacco industry, trying to convince us that our editorial position was wrong and there was no scientific evidence that nicotine was harmful. (This was a time when cigarette ads featured M.D.’s assuring you that one brand was better than the others.) Burnham carried the ball on that one, since he was the only one of us with a good scientific understanding, while Bill just sat at the head of the table, twirling his pencil, grinning his Cheshire cat grin, and enjoying the spectacle of the cancer-shrills being intellectually dismembered.
The fun together didn’t always stop when the work was finished. We would often repair to The Brasserie or some other eatery after an issue was put to bed. At some point toward the end of my formal employment at National Review, Nicola Paone on 34th Street became “the National Review restaurant.” I last ate there two years ago with Priscilla Buckley and my dear friend Tim Wheeler, another one-time editorial assistant at National Review, while Bill Buckley was celebrating his 80th birthday at the next table with friends. Now both Tim and Bill are gone, and I’m thinking I may want that to be my last memory of Paone’s.
All in all, Bill was one of the most easygoing bosses I’ve ever had. But that made it all the more crushing when you weren’t doing your job and were reminded of that in his sonorous tones. He was also a demanding editor. In this pre-computer age, you could readily see all the changes he had made in your copy by the markings of his red pen. Sometimes there seemed to be more red ink than black typewriter copy on the pages I had submitted, but eventually that decreased some. Either I was becoming a better writer or he was giving up.
Of course, when you work for someone as famous as Buckley, what you cherish most are the personal moments together, away from the crowd. I always thought he felt guilty about the peon’s pay I got from National Review, because so often he would go out of his way to augment my pay—but there probably was no guilt involved, just generous Bill. One time he asked me to walk with him to the small apartment he rented a couple of blocks away from the office. He opened the door to the foyer closet and asked me to try on one of his suits. Perfect fit—yes, I was that skinny back then. Bill had developed a wool allergy, and soon I was the new owner of five or six handsome Savile Row suits.
Best of all were the times spent on his boat. Mind you, he was a world-class sailor and I only learned which side was which, starboard and port, by remembering that both “port” and “left” have four characters. So taking me aboard, instead of picking someone who could help him battle the elements in a raging sea, was an act of pure generosity on his part.
Bill’s nautical generosity knew its sensible bounds, though, and I was never invited to join one of his cross-Atlantic sails. Instead, I would be invited on board to ply the calm waters of Long Island Sound.
At night we’d anchor and, with the lights of some Long Island harbor village turning on, Bill would cook dinner and the two of us would consume several bottles of wine, of which he was most fond for as far back as I can remember. We’d have hours of lively talk before the wine took its toll—talk about politics and the conservative movement, to be sure, but mostly about everything else that interested us, which is to say, a lot.
One time we were bringing his boat back from Stamford, Connecticut, where he had his home, to Manhattan. We pulled up at the East River pier on the East River where he normally docked, noticing some strange, rather large ship on the opposite side of the pier. No sooner had we hurled out our ropes than we were overtaken by Secret Service agents. We had forgotten that some Evil Empire potentate was in town, probably Khrushchev if I remember correctly, and no way were they going to allow America’s Mr. Anti-Communist to share that pier.
That had a happy ending for me, though. Bill’s backup was a pier on the Hudson near the George Washington Bridge. He graciously let me take the helm as we sailed under the Brooklyn Bridge, then quickly took it back before I could capsize us. What a memory for a landlubber!
The greatest memory of all
You will notice a recurrent theme in the eulogies coming forth: his personal generosity. It really was his most prominent trait.
When I get to know a man of power and influence, I judge his personal character by the way he treats those with less power, or no power, who depend on him for their well-being in some way. And I know that those people in Bill’s life worshipped him.
I also look at how he handles a crisis in a friend’s life, a crisis of that friend’s making. Does he cut and run to avoid embarrassment by association, or does he stand with his friend even as he tries to set him on the right path? There never was any question which path Bill would take.
He was generous of himself, of his time, and, yes, of his money. And all of this was with no publicity, no accolades, no expected payback. No wonder he died with thousands mourning him.
Bill Buckley was no saint, and he made mistakes, but above all he was a man of character and endless energy and generosity. He taught me that you can have a goal-filled life full of accomplishment while enjoying the journey to the fullest.
David Franke was Editorial Assistant to William F. Buckley Jr. (1960-1962), Washington editor (“Cato”) of National Review (1965-1967), and the compiler of Quotations from Chairman Bill: The Best of William F. Buckley Jr. (Arlington House).
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