Mainstay.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)

WHEN Chris Buckley phoned me with the news, my first words were: "I cannot bear it." I was not thinking so much of the elegant, vibrant, articulate, witty public persona who shaped so much of our period; rather the gentle, tender, thoughtful friend who, by a kind fate, became a mainstay of my life.

Bill Buckley and I met 54 years ago when I asked him to write an article for a Harvard journal. Bill's contribution proved beyond the toleration of the editors, who had never encountered an actual conservative. Twenty years later, Bill introduced me on Firing Line--in the heyday of detente--with the words: "Henry Kissinger reminds me of an athlete who is being carried around the arena to the applause of the multitudes while someone else is winning the race."

It did not matter. By then Bill had become part of my life beyond conventional friendship. And what a blessing Bill's friendship was. It enveloped with a selfless solicitude and evoked a stream of encouraging messages, which were also educational since they usually contained some heretofore unfamiliar word. For example: "Congratulations on your article. The paragraph in the third column is really quite beautiful, giving that exhilaration that is distinctive to superb sorites." On another occasion, he commented on an essay: "I liked especially your treatment of the prophetic versus the contingent. I moved in that direction some years ago using paradigmatic and contingent. Yours is better. I am somewhat prophet-bound."

Throughout my life, Bill was an unobtrusive solace and support. ...