One of a kind: some thoughts on Pat Buckley, 1926-2007

National Review, May 14, 2007

Pat often inhabited a world of high society many of us aren't familiar with, but we all had something profound in common with her, since she loved NR and loved Bill Buckley.

Mr. Lowry is editor of NATIONAL REVIEW.

JAY NORDLINGER

I liked it when she twinkled, and I liked it when she smiled--and she did a lot of both. I also liked it when she dished and opined and generally performed.

You were simply glad you knew her. She made a million quotable comments, provided a million tellable stories. You could draw on them forever (and I intend to). She could be stormy, and she could be pure, warm sunshine. Her capacity for love, and the expression of it, was great. She poured on the love when you needed it most.

The day after she departed, someone very close to her sent me a note, reading, "She was Something." And that capital S was absolutely right. It also occurs to me that she was fond of crossword puzzles, and there is a word used only in crossword puzzles (to my knowledge): "oner." It means unique, one-of-a-kind. It certainly fits.

What can you say besides you loved her and you'll never forget her? She would often say to me, "I'll call you tomorrow." That was a regular signoff: "I'll call you tomorrow." She won't be calling me, not on the telephone, but, baby, I'll remember.

Mr. Nordlinger is managing editor of NATIONAL REVIEW.

JOHN O'SULLIVAN

Before I met Pat Buckley, I had been told two things about her: first that she was extremely glamorous, second that she was one of the leaders of New York society. Both were true. Pat had the kind of tall slender figure that flattered the designer gowns she wore, and her name (plus Bill's) was at the top of every important list for parties and charity balls in the city.

When I finally did meet her, I wondered that someone so candid and witty could have flourished in social circles where self-importance was not unknown. Her wit and candor, I soon realized, made her wonderfully invigorating company. New Yorkers liked someone who could beat them at their own games of verbal dexterity.

Pat's social leadership was more than merely social, however. Conservatives were rare in such circles. Pat may have been more conservative than Bill--at one time she had a Buchanan bumper sticker on her car. Together they were conservatism's golden couple, giving a contemporary Manhattan gloss to a movement that its enemies would like to have caricatured as provincial, dull, and outdated.

Pat was also a loving wife and mother, a loyal friend, and active in many charitable causes. Those are, I tell myself, the important things. Then I remember the many NR dinners to which she welcomed guests of every opinion with style, generosity, and haute cuisine--and I cannot help feeling that the witty glamour girl may have done more for conservatism than a thousand well-written editorials.

Mr. O'Sullivan is an NR editor-at-large.

NORMAN PODHORETZ

Pat Buckley was obviously a great lady in the usual sense of that term, but she was also something better than that--one of the very few truly great women I have been lucky enough to know in my by now rather long lifetime. Beautiful, it goes without saying; regal in stature and bearing, certainly; clever almost to a fault, yes; and intelligent to the highest degree. All this was infused with a vitality that imparted a special radiance to her presence, an iridescent aura in which you bathed whenever you got near her. It was so powerful that it could hardly be dimmed even when, in the last few years, she grew crotchety and, if truth be told, even a bit cantankerous, from the constant pain from which she has now been delivered. But for those of us who admired and loved her and who know that we will never look upon her like again, there is no deliverance: There is only the selfish heartbreak at being robbed of so rich a giver of delights.