I cannot recommend Jack Fowler’s remembrance of Wick Allison enough.
Wick Allison was one of the most memorable people I’ve ever encountered. Our meeting in a New York hotel was brief and yet it included a sin so memorable, and an act of generosity so gratuitous, that neither would be appropriate to recount in detail. Wick helped salvage The American Conservative a decade ago. In the act, he probably kept me in journalism at a time when I thought political journalism was dying. My family can bless and curse him for that.
What I will never forget is his smile and laugh. He was as big and ambitious as the city he loved, Big D. He smiled like a man who was carrying a pistol unlatched. Like he was always about to do something memorable. His family, particularly his daughter Maisie — just as fiery, I think — is in my prayers.