It is hard to find the right envoi for Jim Buckley. For a man of his faith, it would be God bless you, or God be with you. The formal titles accorded senators and judges would acknowledge his service, but seem too stiff for his person. They did not elevate him, he graced them. He was a genial man, but a verbal high five would sound clunky.

A shilling life, or these days a Wikipedia entry, will give you all the facts. The charm and the force of his personality is what most remains. Age 15, I passed out Buckley for Senator candy bars on my suburban street the time he won his three-way race against the incumbent liberal Republican Charles Goodell and Democrat Richard Ottinger.

When I told him of this decades later, he responded characteristically that his campaign team had noticed a better-than-usual result in Irondequoit, N.Y. He was now glad to know the cause.

I happened to be in his Washington office the day he called for Richard Nixon to resign. The phones, as they used to say, were ringing off the hooks (ear and mouthpieces no longer rested on hooks, but phones still had actual bells). How dare you!? was the theme of the printable calls.

So he began his political career by bucking the GOP establishment, and he marked it by bucking the leader of the would-be new GOP establishment. All in a day’s work so long as he held his course.

Decades later I had written an excoriation, not just of Trump (that was easy) but of the conservative movement which had shamefully followed him. At some NR function he thanked me; the highest political compliment.

His devotion to his wife Ann in her last illness impressed all who knew of it as admirable and unsurprising. Admirers of his schemed to have the visitor center of the wildlife refuge in New York City’s Jamaica Bay named after him, in honor of his love of all things natural.

He had the Buckley family eyes and smile — bright, smart, mirthful. It was combined with an ease and a consideration that left one feeling warmed.

Farewell.