I have known Lee for more than 60 years, and here is the truth: He was the nicest person I have ever met. And at the same time, he was a prodigious author and exponent for our modern conservative movement — writing and editing 25 books plus uncountable articles. If you call yourself a conservative, Lee is the kind of person you should aspire to be.
My most vivid remembrance was when, in 1962, he proposed that a new group of young conservatives he helped form at William F. Buckley Jr’s home only two years before filling Madison Square Garden to hear Senator Barry Goldwater speak out against communism in America’s most liberal city. I thought he was mad to expect such an organization with a few hundred members to do the impossible on such a controversial issue.
Lee proved his stalwart leadership by somehow turning out 18,000 live anticommunists.
He helped found Young Americans for Freedom in 1960 and created and edited its magazine, the New Guard, from 1961. Lee was press director for Senator Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign, putting modern conservativism on the political map. And he was an early supporter of Ronald Reagan. Most importantly, he fulfilled his lifetime goal to remember the millions of forgotten casualties of evil communism. He led a movement to recognize them first in a Washington, D.C., monument and then was influential in creating a larger home called the Victims of Communism Museum near the White House.
While essential as a conservative political leader, Lee’s real passion was writing. He wrote important books about politics but also on history and ideas. He had associations with Georgetown University, Harvard Institute of Politics, Catholic University of America, and the Heritage Foundation, among others.
He had a 50-year-long correspondence with Buckley and was one of the few Reagan biographers to stress that both leaders were motivated by a deep understanding of conservativism’s libertarian-means and traditionalist-ends tension that was the intellectual foundation for Western civilization and America’s success.
Knowing his end, Lee was still showing courageous leadership at a recent Philadelphia Society meeting, cheering on the attending conservative intellectuals. His political and academic legacy will live on in the people he has inspired and through his many writings that have influenced so many over the years. I will especially miss our trading of ideas across so much time.
Knowing him well, I can attest that Lee’s primary attribute actually was being a good human being. And his wife Anne, too. He told me at her funeral that I was the only one there who knew that wonderful and supporting person longer than he did. He was a loving husband and father of two marvelous daughters and eleven grandchildren. He was a regular churchgoer and took his Catholicism seriously.
I always saw Lee as the most honorable person in the room. I will miss him, as all conservatives will when we need support and realize he is not there.
Donald Devine is a senior scholar at the Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C. He served as President Ronald Reagan’s civil service director during his first term in office. A former professor, he is the author of eleven books, including his most recent, The Enduring Tension: Capitalism and the Moral Order, and Ronald Reagan’s Enduring Principles.