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

I MET Bill and Pat in 1965, when Bill was running for mayor of New York, and I learned then that they had a wonderful time "winding each other up," as the Brits say. One night during the campaign, Bill was writing a speech at dinner (!) in the upper room of a restaurant. Nearby, a huge crowd of Buckley fans was waiting to hear it delivered. He typed away on his Olivetti, surrounded by utensils and piles of yellow paper. Bill wrote something about Eleanor Roosevelt, who, he said, "certainly took her own time dying." As he finished each page, he passed it around the table for us on the campaign team to look at, and when that one got to Pat, she screamed, in that way we got to know and love, "BIIILL! YOU CAN'T SAY THAT!" If there had been any doubt in Bill's mind, that removed it. The line stayed in, and when he read it, the crowd exploded.

A quarter century later, they were still at it. In 1991 my wife and I and two of our children stayed with Bill and Pat at the chateau in Rougemont, Switzerland, that they rented each winter for years. We were living in Paris, and I had asked Bill if we could bring our daughter Susie's cat with us. It was to be a clandestine op: The cat would be kept in a closet in ...