(Official Washington Examiner editorial, Dec. 31)
It is easy for newspapers to pen dry remembrances of significant people who died in the past year, but harder and more important to identify particular ones whose lives and work we should honor or emulate.
From wide-ranging fields, then, let us pay special homage to the following Americans for signal contributions to the common culture, with extra weight for some who advanced ideals generally described, in modern parlance, as conservative.
In that light, starting with those overtly active in the political or policy worlds, please remember Richard Allen, who served well in Richard Nixon’s White House before becoming Ronald Reagan’s first National Security Advisor, where he played a key role in developing Reagan’s plans to not just contain Soviet Communism but transcend it. Lee Edwards memorialized communism’s victims and chronicled conservativism’s long rise, after having mightily contributed to the birth of the conservative movement itself. Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, the only non-U.S. citizen on our list, was a national leader second in importance only to Great Britain’s Margaret Thatcher in aiding Reagan’s successful anti-Sovietism.
In the fight for economic and personal liberty domestically, Chip Mellor of the Institute for Justice, David Boaz of the Cato Institute, and Fred Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute were champions on their respective battlefields. Reagan-Bush official Ted Olson was a titan of the conservative legal movement. Linda Bean (of the L.L. Bean family) was a noted philanthropist, conservationist, and Eagle Forum activist both for traditional values and for Reagan’s peace-through-strength stance on intercontinental missiles. And Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) was no conservative, but he was a principled statesman who stood tall for national defense, forged fertile alliances with conservatives on saving sacred spaces and in preserving other realms of the common culture, and elevated dignified discourse in the public square.
In what once was known as the world of letters, two once-prominent figures were celebrated for equal-opportunity skewering of both Left and Right with insight and panache. Lewis Lapham edited Harper’s Magazine for nearly 30 years, and Noel Parmentel brought what William F. Buckley called “vituperative art” to regular essays for the radically divergent National Review and Nation magazines, and was credited by both Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne (writers extraordinaire) for being their most important early mentor.
From the world of entertainment, this publication featured a tribute to classically trained popular musician Eric Carmen (whose Twitter feed was notably conservative). Actors Louis Gossett Jr. and the incomparable James Earl Jones (a devout Catholic, military veteran, and patriot) graced stage and screen for well over half a century each, usually choosing roles exemplifying traditional virtues.
Gossett’s most famous role involved training future pilots, but two real pilots of great note left us in 2024. After making more than 300 carrier landings as a naval aviator, Richard Truly became an astronaut, serving as commander on one of the earlier flights of the doomed space shuttle Challenger, then the first commander of the Naval Space Command, then NASA Administrator (among other distinguished positions). And the swashbuckling Dick Rutan flew 325 missions in Vietnam and won a Silver Star before becoming a celebrated test pilot, most famously joining Jeana Yeager in 1986 on the first unrefueled non-stop flight around the world.
From the world of sports, all-time great performers Pete Rose, O.J. Simpson, and Jerry West grabbed plenty of headlines, but we prefer highlighting the brilliant humanitarian Dikembe Mutombo, shot-blocker extraordinaire, along with two remarkable football players less remembered now but who were multiple-time Pro Bowlers and NFL champions.
Pittsburgh Steeler linebacker Andy Russell played in 169 consecutive games, earned an M.B.A., became a leading entrepreneur and investment guru, and ran a charitable foundation that raised millions for an extraordinary range of medical causes. And Cleveland Browns quarterback Frank Ryan led that team as a mid-1960s powerhouse and title winner while – get this – becoming one of the nation’s most eminent mathematicians. In addition to contributing to groundbreaking work in math theory, Ryan led academic institutions and also showed an eminently practical bent. It was Ryan who, as director of information services for the U.S. House of Representatives, designed the House’s first electronic voting system a half century ago, cutting vote times from 45 to 15 minutes.
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And finally, there was the incomparable Willie Mays, perhaps the single greatest mid-century cultural touchstone in all of American sports, the subject of multiple pop songs and more than a few of the most famous quips in athletics history. (Said actress Tallulah Bankhead: “There have only been two geniuses in the world – Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.”) And in a time of great racial tension, this virtuoso of the baseball diamond transcended it all, saying he concentrated on “changing hatred to laughter.”
Say, hey: These are people who led lives of luminosity. Hats off to them – with gratitude.
