An e-mail from Colorado Springs:

To: Kathryn Lopez
Sent: Fri Apr 04 23:39:00 2008
Subject: NRO’s Amazing Tribute to WFB
Dear Madam Lopez (KLO),
What a treasure for the world is NationalReview.com. that is such a simple statement but tonight it must be said because I have spent the time since putting my three small children to bed silently reading next to my wife both the wonderful tributes to Mr. William F. Buckley and his amazing send-offs to the great and not-so-great people of the world, some of whom I alas had never heard of before reading his response to their lives.
My eyes are filled with tears, both at his passing and for your and everyone at NR’s loss. In my life aside from my own father I have only known two great men, both of whom passed before their mid 50s. Great men are hard to find, and even harder to lose. It is clear from all that has been said since Mr. Buckley’s passing that he was indeed a great man, though I think I knew that from the days when as a teen in the 1980s I got hooked watching this strange show on PBS with a man whose way of speaking left me looking up half his words in the dictionary, while of course trying desperately to memorize the other half. I was a pre-teen conservative in the early 1980s when I asked my parents for a subscription to National Review, which we could not afford, but for which I have had a lifetime habit of supporting libraries because they had it for this erstwhile pagan conservative during those years. It was only years later that I realized the man on the television and the man behind National Review were the same.
NationalReview.com is a gift of grace into my life, especially this past year as various ailments have sapped my strength and skills (thankfully nothing life threatening) after completing my PhD (in Theology, as indeed I learned that being a conservative meant one had to explore the deeper things of life). Your work and the work of your whole team at the website is of countless value, and that is why our family has happily donated $10 a month to the cause of NRO since last year. But tonight you have truly blessed me by helping me to feel like I have now known a third great man in my life. I only ask that you continue to post the old writings of Mr. Buckley every so often that in reading them my mind and my dictionary may again be opened up for deeper reflection and knowledge.
May the NR and NRO tribe increase in the year ahead. And may we all continue to stand athwart history for the sake of freedom and goodness.