Jeremiah Milbank Jr., R.I.P.(OBITUARY)(Obituary)

WHEN the need for such a magazine as this one crystallized, General Eisenhower was president and his reelection was presumed. But there was dissatisfaction with the substance of Republican-establishment thought, which was dismissed by many as jejune and opportunistic, and there was a perceived need for a conservative alternative. If memory serves, the very first person I called upon to give a little corporate substance to National Review, Inc., was Jeremiah Milbank Jr.

The reason for this was in part personal. He had graduated from Yale with my brother John, and the friendship endured. Besides that, Jerry lived in Greenwich, Conn., and thus was my near neighbor. But never mind proximity, there was also the matter of his reputation. He was a conservative, which was what mattered, and also a philanthropist, in the tradition of his father and grandfather--but he kept his own company.

He lived with his enchanting, slightly zany wife, Andrea, and their four children, and he was active in various charitable enterprises, notably the International Center for the Disabled, which his father founded in 1917. But his generosity, however endlessly expressed, was not going to take over his life, and he also persevered with his family business in New York. He was an unabashedly forthright conservative but a conventional citizen who cultivated his longtime attachment to the Republican party. He eventually became the chairman of ...