Remembering William F. Buckley, Jr.

I was about as unaligned with his political views as one could possibly be but had the privilege of working with him on several occasions as well as sharing a wine-laden lunch that I will never forget.

And despite our differing views I found him to be extremely tolerant of what I thought. This is in stark contrast to today's climate where if you disagree with someone you're viewed to be a person with serious moral or intellectual deficiencies.

When I heard of his passing today I recalled the several times he wrote articles for Yachting where I was editor at the time. When he first called to pitch a story about a sailing trip to the Med I at first thought it was a prank. (I'm sure this must happen to many people like him.) I agreed to the article and several weeks later he brought his laptop to our office, added a few key sentences based on some back issues in our library and then printed out the article. (While he was very much ahead of his time in terms of word processing I was struck but how un productive it was to print the article out and have us re-key it.) Nevertheless, the article made it to print.

However, it didn't happen without a stern rebuke. During the final editing process one word was changed and Buckley called up all steamed that we had completely ruined the story. It didn't seem like that big a deal at the time but seeing that I was at a disadvantage arguing about words with William F. Buckley I apologized in a letter back to him. Several days later he faxed back the letter with a note saying that the whole argument was stupid and let's forget about it.

This all led to a lunch at his house in Stamford that was one of the most fascinating I've ever had. Fearful he would discover my left-wing tendencies I tried to steer the conversation to just sailing and only sailing. Still, after copious amounts of wine and with photos of Nixon, Kissinger and Reagan hanging over my head he did discover my views and while I am absolutely positive I had no influence on him I was duly impressed about how tolerant and gracious he was about my opinions.

After lunch and more wine I realized I needed to crawl home and sleep all this off. He, on the other hand, wandered off to his study to complete a speech he was writing for an appearance at Yale that evening.