I once wrote a letter to my hero, hoping to get one back. This was early in 1976, and I'd recently taken my first newspaper job. William F. Buckley Jr., who was willing to challenge liberal orthodoxy and defend traditional norms like no one else, was as famous as I was obscure, and I could think of no good reason he would actually write back. He was, after all, the most prolific writer around, and he did his weekly Firing Line show and all the speeches, and then there was the skiing in Switzerland, the transatlantic sailing, and more.
But the busy Buckley-"Dictated in Switzerland, Transcribed in New York," it said atop the page-wrote back. He answered a question I'd asked him about Albert Jay Nock, ending with this: "By the way, I own the holograph of Jefferson," Nock's biography of Thomas Jefferson. That "by the way" sentence served to invite me into my hero's company: The two of us could discuss Nock and maybe other writers and ideas.
But it was the next sentence that bowled me over: "That was a splendid essay you did on C.S. Lewis." It had appeared eight months earlier in the old Alternative, soon to be renamed the American Spectator, and it was my first magazine piece ever. That Buckley could remember it at all astonished me. That he liked it was a huge encouragement to someone toiling in the newspaper equivalent of low-A ball.
What I didn't understand then was that my hero had an unusual
gift for friendship. I began to see that two months later when I went to a lecture he gave at High Point College in North Carolina. Afterwards a large crowd gathered around him. I got just close enough to introduce myself. I thought that would be that. But Buckley greeted me as though we'd known each other for years and began walking me out, asking whether I'd like to get something to eat. The crowd parted before the two of us like the Red Sea.
Later that year the Democrats were to hold their convention in New York. I wrote Bill that I'd be up to cover it. He responded that since I hadn't said where I'd be staying, he'd try calling my newspaper to find out, as he wanted "to see if you can join us for dinner." The thought of Bill Buckley calling my paper to find out where I was staying in New York was amazing. But that was Bill. He'd go to such lengths. As it happened, I managed to reach him. And to make it to his home for dinner.
A year later I was in San Diego working for the morning newspaper. Bill was to lecture at a local college, and I wrote to say I was looking forward to the event. In reply, remembering that I'd told him I recognized his High Point speech as one previously published in the Alternative, he told me he might give that old speech and didn't want me to have to sit through it again. "If I see you in that front row, I shall cut either my throat or yours. Possibly yours, since otherwise"-flashing his characteristic wit-"I would not get my fee."
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