Let Only a Few Speak for Him

Some men are touched by God, and in turn they reach out to others the grace of their intuition. Such a man was Whittaker Chambers. Only the foolish and the mediocre denigrated him. For evil in its own way recognizes and respects the good, however it may hate. Now he is dead, out of the mind’s reach, a solitary figure in the history he knew so well and helped to make. Those of us who knew him, who shared his trust or had a sometime view of the life he saw through those laughing, prescient eyes, can reread his letters and weep and know the cold edge of our loss. Why write of him when he has so much better written of himself? Why beat hopelessly at a door that is locked and adamant in its exclusion?

There is a reason. Whittaker Chambers was my friend, my father, my brother—and sometimes my son. But this is my private concern. A public duty resides in those who remain, transitory between eternities, to speak of the dead. We do not honor them, but ourselves. And if we utter our longing and sorrow, it is a prayer to the God who made us and who will judge us at the End Day. We also make our witness before a hostile world. He knew what that hostility would be. Writing to me on Easter Sunday 1956, his fifty-fifth birthday, Whittaker Chambers said: “I hope you have my obit ready. What fun the yappy little dogs will have. I don’t even begrudge it them, rest seems so welcome.”

RT

About the Author

Ralph de Toledano

Some men are touched by God, and in turn they reach out to others the grace of their intuition. Such a man was Whittaker Chambers. Only the foolish and the mediocre denigrated him. For evil in its own way recognizes and respects the good, however it may hate. Now he is dead, out of the mind’s reach, a solitary figure in the history he knew so well and helped to make. Those of us who knew him, who shared his trust or had a sometime view of the life he saw through those laughing, prescient eyes, can reread his letters and weep and know the cold edge of our loss. Why write of him when he has so much better written of himself? Why beat hopelessly at a door that is locked and adamant in its exclusion?

There is a reason. Whittaker Chambers was my friend, my father, my brother—and sometimes my son. But this is my private concern. A public duty resides in those who remain, transitory between eternities, to speak of the dead. We do not honor them, but ourselves. And if we utter our longing and sorrow, it is a prayer to the God who made us and who will judge us at the End Day. We also make our witness before a hostile world. He knew what that hostility would be. Writing to me on Easter Sunday 1956, his fifty-fifth birthday, Whittaker Chambers said: “I hope you have my obit ready. What fun the yappy little dogs will have. I don’t even begrudge it them, rest seems so welcome.”