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

RICHARD BROOKHISER

She and Bill were guests once at my house upstate. They had been driven all the way from Stamford to the eastern Catskills, a long way made longer by a wrong turn. Pat gazed from the backseat, through sunglasses, a King Charles spaniel on her lap. "Are we still in the United States?"

I had a practical question I wanted to pose them, especially her, knowing she was a crack shot. Raccoons get rabies, and I had seen one in the early stages. What would they recommend for varmint control? Ashotgun, was the consensus. A while after that, I got a call from Linda Bridges, who had a mysterious package for me at the office. "What does it look like?" I asked her.

"I think it's a gun," she said.

"I think I know why," I said.

It was a .20 gauge, side by side, Spanish, with etchings of pheasants and hunting dogs, and a set of initials: PTB.

Mr. Brookhiser is an NR senior editor.

JACK FOWLER

From the perspective of an NR functionary, she was the boss's wife, yes, but she was also an independent, larger-than-life force. One memory: A few years ago, at a reception, she demanded that I join her in some merry conversation with Barbara Walters and Nancy Kissinger--and hanging with the doyennes is not exactly something a Bronx schlub would ever have imagined himself doing.

But my own dealings with Pat are irrelevant. What is relevant is that Pat let--and helped--her equally larger-than-life husband undertake the monumental task of launching a massive political movement that played a central role in bringing freedom to millions of tyrannized people.

Mr. Fowler is publisher of NATIONAL REVIEW.

EVAN GALBRAITH

In the spring of 1950, Bill had Pat Taylor for a weekend at Yale, and I invited them to dinner at a fraternity, DKE. Pat had a bad impression of fraternities, and once seated she looked around and said, "I hear everyone around here is drunk half the time." I demurred: "Oh no, we drink twice that much." She roared with laughter and grabbed my hand, saying, "We'll get along just fine!"

Pat Taylor Buckley was humor. Later that summer in Vancouver at their sumptuous wedding, Pat worried that some of us Yalie ushers might not show up sober and she had her mother issue an order to the ushers: "No Nips before Nups." Violators would be seized and pressed into the Canadian army and sent to Korea. Pat's father was a very big wheel and we all believed he could do it. We all laughed for years, on land and at sea, over "No Nips before Nups."

Pat's humor was like mother's milk to her friends.

Mr. Galbraith is Defense Department representative in Europe and defense adviser to the U.S. mission to NATO.

JEFF GREENFIELD

My first television experience was as a panelist on Firing Line, and in that role I was invited to come to London in 1969 for a few of the show's tapings. That was the first time I met Pat, who seemed to me a larger-than-life figure, someone who inhabited a world I had only seen thumbing through newspapers and magazines. But the more times I met her, the more I came to believe that, for all of the presence she brought with her into every room she entered, she viewed much of life with a twinkle in the eye.

One day I offered Bill a fine Havana cigar--to avoid political offense, I invited him to slowly burn the agricultural export of a dictatorship--and heard Pat declaim, "Bill, you're not going to smoke one of those dreadful Communist cigars, are you?" I do not think I imagined her capacity to savor the life she led, while avoiding the trap of taking its trappings too seriously.

And oh, yes: Her love for Bill, and his for her, was also a presence in every room they occupied together.

Mr. Greenfield is senior political correspondent for CBS News.

JOSEPH LIEBERMAN

She was an accomplished woman in many ways, but I would not say that street politics was necessarily one of them. Yet she made an exception that mattered much to me. During my first campaign for Senate in 1988, I benefited greatly from Bill's formation of "BuckPac." And I can vividly remember Pat as a dedicated foot-soldier standing outside a supermarket or two in Stamford handing out BuckPac literature, and in her own grand manner of speech, making the case for the Buckley family's candidate for the Senate. Since I was elected that year by less than 1 percent of the vote, it is quite possible that Bill and Pat's efforts made the difference!

A great friend, a dedicated mother, and a loving wife, Pat will be missed by all who came into contact with her.

Mr. Lieberman is a senator from Connecticut.

RICHARD LOWRY

Like most young NR staffers, I was very daunted by Pat Buckley when I first met her. She was such a grand figure. As I got to know her better, I came to appreciate the twinkle in her eye. You had to be on your toes at the editorial dinners she hosted. But one of my favorite things was when she would direct an acerbic remark someone's way and he would find the perfect comeback and Pat would dissolve in laughter. When Pat wasn't at the dinners, they weren't the same-something special had been taken out of them. And so it will be in NR's life generally now that she's gone.