Expressing the condolences of the House of Representatives on the death of William F. Buckley, Jr.

I thank my former chairman for yielding, and now ranking member of the Government Oversight Committee.

I wanted to speak today because I have tremendous admiration for William Buckley, Jr. He lived in many places. He had a wonderful home in New York City, he had a wonderful home on the water in Stamford, Connecticut, in the Fourth Congressional District, and a family compound in Sharon, Connecticut, as well.

Bill Buckley was an absolute delight to interact with. On occasion, not often, I would be invited to have dinner at his home, and he would have people of great notoriety. I would participate in the dialog, but a lot of the time I felt it was best to listen more than talk. I loved the twinkle in Bill Buckley's eyes as he debated people, and me, on occasion.

There was nothing mean or angry ever in the way he spoke to people. He had strong views, but he clearly liked the interaction that took place. He loved debating ideas, he loved drawing you out. But I never once ever heard him be nasty about anyone. He was a conservative with strong views but he listened kindly to those with other views.

I would like to place in the Record, A Eulogy for My Father, St. Patrick's Cathedral, April 4, 2008, and that is by his only son, Christopher Buckley. I will just read a slight part of it. This was delivered on the occasion of the memorial mass for his dad at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Christopher began by saying, ``We talked about this day, he and I, a few years ago. He said to me, `If I'm still famous, try to convince the cardinal to do the service at St. Patrick's. If I'm not, just tuck me away in Stamford.' '' Then Christopher went on to say, ``Well, Pup, I guess you're famous.''

Further on he said, ``Pope Benedict will be saying mass here in 2 weeks. I was told that the music at this mass for my father would in effect be the dress rehearsal for the Pope's. I think that would have pleased him, though doubtless he would have preferred it to be the other way around.''

It was a magnificent service. It was a service where great joy and admiration was expressed and with people from all political persuasions, from the most liberal, to the most conservative. We were saluting a man, the likes of which we may never see again, sadly.

With that, let me say thank goodness for William Buckley, for his magnificent family, and for the grace which embodied everything he did.

Eulogy for My Father

Delivered on the Occasion of the Memorial Mass for the Repose of the

Soul of William F. Buckley Jr. on April 4, 2008, at St. Patrick's

Cathedral

(By Christopher Buckley)

We talked about this day, he and I, a few years ago. He

said to me, ``If I'm still famous, try to convince the

Cardinal to do the service at St. Patrick's. If I'm not, just

tuck me away in Stamford.''

Well, Pup, I guess you're still famous.

I'd like to thank Cardinal Egan and Msgr. Ritchie of the

archdiocese for their celestial hospitality, and Fr. Rutter

for his typically gracious words. I'd also like to thank Dr.

Jennifer Pascual, musical director of St. Patrick's, as well

as the St. Patrick's Cathedral Choir, and organists Donald

Dumler and Rick Tripodi for such beautiful music.

Pope Benedict will be saying Mass here in two weeks. I was

told that the music at this Mass for my father would, in

effect, be the dress rehearsal for the Pope's. I think that

would have pleased him, though doubtless he'd have preferred

it to be the other way around.

I do know he'd have been pleased, amidst the many

obituaries and tributes, by the number of editorial cartoons

that depicted him at the Pearly Gates. One showed St. Peter

groaning, ``I'm going to need a bigger dictionary.'' If I

disposed of the cartoonist's skills, I might draw one showing

a weary St. Peter greeting the Fed Ex man, ``Let me guess--

another cover story on Mr. Buckley?''

My mother is no longer with us, so we can only speculate as

to how she might react to these depictions of her husband of

56 years arriving in Paradise so briskly. My sense is that

she would be vastly amused. On the day he retired from Firing

Line after a 33-year-long run, Nightline (no relation) did a

show to mark the occasion. At the end, Ted Koppel said,

``Bill, we have one minute left. Would you care to sum up

your 33-years in television?'' To which my father replied,

``No.''

Taking his cue, I won't attempt to sum him up in my few

minutes here. A great deal has been written and said about

him in the month since he died, at his desk, in his study in

Stamford. After I'd absorbed the news, I sat down to compose

an e-mail. My inner English major ineluctably asserted itself

and I found myself quoting (misquoting, slightly) a line from

Hamlet, He was a man, Horatio, take him for all in all, I

shall not look upon his like again.

One of my first memories of him was of driving up to

Sharon, Connecticut for Thanksgiving. It would have been

about 1957. He had on the seat between us an enormous reel-

to-reel tape recorder. For a conservative, my old man was

always on the cutting edge of the latest gadgetry--despite

the fact that at his death, he was almost certainly the only

human being left on the planet who still used Word Star.

It was a recording of MacBeth. My five-year-old brain

couldn't make much sense of it. I asked him finally, ``What's

eating the queen?'' He explained about the out-out-damned

spot business. I replied, ``Why doesn't she try Palmolive?''

So began my tutelage with the world's coolest mentor. It was

on those drives to Sharon that we had some of our best talks.

This afternoon, I'll make one last drive up there to bury

him,

alongside with his sisters in the little cemetery by the

brook. When we held the wake for him some days after he died,

I placed inside his casket a few items to see him across the

River Styx: his favorite rosary, the TV remote control--

private joke--a jar of peanut butter, and my mother's ashes.

I can hear her saying, ``Bill--what is that disgusting

substance leaking all over me?'' No pharaoh went off to the

afterlife better equipped than he does.

The last time I was with him in Sharon was last October. It

was a fundraiser for the local library, billed as ``A Bevy of

Buckleys''--my dad, Uncle Jim, Aunt Pitts, Aunt Carol, me--

reading from the aggregate Buckley oeuvre--a word I first

heard from his lips many years ago, along with other exotic,

multi-lingual bon mots: mutatis mutandis; pari passu; quod

licet Jove, non licet bovi.

An article had appeared in the local paper a few days

before, alerting the community to this gala event. As I

perused the clipping, my eyes alighted on the sentence: ``The

Buckleys are a well-known American family, William F. Buckley

being arguably the best known.''

I kept my amusement to myself, and handed Pup the clipping

and waited silently for the reaction I knew would come. Sure

enough, within seconds, he looked up with what I would

describe as only faintly bemused indignation and said,

``Ar-guably?''

He was--inarguably--a great man. This is, from a son's

perspective, a mixed blessing, because it means having to

share him with the wide world. It was often a very mixed

blessing when you were out sailing with him. Great men always

have too much canvas up. And great men set out from port in

conditions that keep lesser men--such as myself--safe and

snug on shore. One October day in 1997, I arrived from

Washington in Stamford for a long-planned overnight sail. As

the train pulled into the station, I looked out and saw

people hanging onto lampposts at 90-degree angles, trying not

to be blown away by the northeast gale that was raging.

Indeed, it resembled a scene from The Wizard of Oz. When the

train doors opened, I was blown back into the carriage by the

50-mile-an-hour wind. I managed to crawl out onto the

platform, practically on all fours, whereupon my father

greeted me with a chipper, ``We'll have a brisk sail.''

I looked up at him incredulously and said, ``We're going

out in this?'' Indeed we did go out in it. We always went out

in it. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother,

shrieking at him as the water broke over the cockpit and the

boat pitched furiously in boiling seas, ``Bill--Bill! Why are

you trying to kill us?''

But the cries of timorous souls never phased him. He had

been going out in it for years, ever since he published his

first book, God and Man At Yale. Nor did he need a sailboat

to roil the waters. His Royal typewriter--and later, Word

Star--would do.

How many words flowed from those keyboards. I went up to

Yale recently to inspect his archive of papers. They total

550 linear feet. To put it in perspective, the spire of St.

Patrick's rises 300 feet above us. By some scholarly

estimates, he may have written more letters than any other

American in history. Add to that prodigal output: 6,000

columns, 1,500 Firing Line episodes, countless articles, over

50 books. He was working on one the day he died.

Jose Marti famously said that a man must do three things in

life: write a book, plant a tree, have a son. I don't know

that my father ever planted a tree. Surely whole forests,

whole eco-systems, were put to the axe on his account. But he

did plant a lot of seeds and many of them, grown to fruition,

are here today. Quite a harvest, that.

It's not easy coming up with an epitaph for such a man. I

was tempted by something Mark Twain once said, ``Homer's

dead, Shakespeare's dead, and I myself am not feeling at all

well.''

Years ago, he gave an interview to Playboy Magazine. Asked

why he did this, he couldn't resist saying, ``In order to

communicate with my 16-year-old son.'' At the end of the

interview, he was asked what he would like for an epitaph and

he replied, `` `I know that my Redeemer liveth.' '' Only Pup

could manage to work the Book of Job into a Hugh Hefner

publication. I finally settled on one, and I'll say the words

over his grave at sunset today in Sharon, as we lay him to

rest. They're from a poem he knew well--Robert Louis

Stevenson's Requiem--each line of which, indeed, seemed to

have been written just for him:

Under the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live, and gladly die.

And I lay me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be.

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

I thank the gentleman for yielding and for the privilege of having the opportunity to speak in favor of this important resolution expressing the condolences of the House of Representatives on the death of William F. Buckley, Jr. I also want to thank the Democratic leadership of the Congress for scheduling this bill and giving this Congress and this country an opportunity to express appreciation for an extraordinary American life.

This resolution was introduced by Congressman Tom Feeney. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the bill. I want to thank Congressman Tom Feeney for his leadership and his compassionate attentiveness in bringing this legislation before the Congress. Congressman Feeney cannot be with us today. He is on a congressional delegation trip to China. But I know that were he here, he would regale this floor and those watching in with his deep affection and appreciation for the life and work of William F. Buckley, Jr.

As this resolution attests, William F. Buckley, Jr., was an American hero and an intellectual leader of the conservative movement for more than five decades. As the previous speaker just alluded, he led in a manner that earned both the respect and the friendship of his political adversaries.

William F. Buckley, from his many years on television, the program, Firing Line, which was the longest running political television program in the history of American television, he demonstrated that wit and sharpness and civility can all go together, and it is a lesson that I suspect many of us on an ongoing basis can continue to learn and apply in the institutions of our government.

By virtue of his distinct personality, his talents, his humor and his goodwill, William F. Buckley has been recognized as the premier conservative intellectual in post-World War II America. He once commented that he would ``rather live in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone directory than in one governed by the 2,000 members of the Harvard faculty.'' It was that kind of rapier wit, beginning with the publication of his book ``God and Man at Yale,'' that ended up resulting in the publication of thousands of books, thousands of columns, and thousands of debates that turned him into a force of nature in the American public debate.

We also recognize him as a man who played a critical role in helping this Nation understand the great calling of his generation, which inasmuch as the calling of the greatest generation, was to confront Nazism and fascism.

William F. Buckley and his intellect and his capacity for elocution managed to help focus the Nation on the threat of Soviet communism and the realities of the Soviet Union, and I believe that history will record that it was William F. Buckley, Jr., perhaps more than any other American, who outside of government influenced the leadership in the 1980s that led to the collapse of Soviet communism and the Soviet Union.

Upon the election of Ronald Reagan, it was reported to me once that William F. Buckley was asked what position he would like to have in the new Reagan Administration, to which he apparently put his hand in his jacket pocket and replied with a twinkle in his eye, ``ventriloquist.'' And in many respects William F. Buckley was a ventriloquist for so many of us in public life, reading his columns, reading his books, having from time to time the privilege of watching him long distance or in person as he made the case for limited government. He made the case for traditional values. He made the case for the American ideal of freedom, here at home and on a global basis. We, all of us, were happy to have that extraordinary intellect and heart filled with goodwill pull the strings on our careers and guide us and direct us.

So, I join my colleagues, and especially Congressman Tom Feeney, in taking this moment to give honor and thanks to William F. Buckley, Jr., for all he did to advance the vision for America and a capitalist democratic vision for the world and to express the profound sorrow this Nation feels upon his death.

The Bible says if you owe debts, pay debts; if honor, then honor; if respect, then respect. Today, thanks to the leadership in the minority and the generosity of the majority, Congress and the American people will have the opportunity once more to pay a debt of gratitude to this great American, who was William F. Buckley, Jr.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1016) expressing the condolences of the House of Representatives on the death of William F. Buckley, Jr., as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I stand to present H. Res. 1016, which was introduced by Representative Tom Feeney of Florida on March 4 of this year, and enjoys the cosponsorship of over 90 Members of Congress. The measure was considered by and voted out of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee on March 13, 2008, after having been amended.

William F. Buckley was born on November 24, 1925, in New York City, and even as a young child he displayed a remarkable level of intelligence and awareness. Along with English, Mr. Buckley was fluent in Spanish and French, and was an avid musician and outdoorsman.

After attending the National Autonomous University in Mexico in 1943, Buckley was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army. During his tenure, he served as a member of Franklin Roosevelt's Honor Guard until the President passed away. After his military service, Buckley went on to attend Yale, where he was a member of the Skull and Bones Society, a master debater, and editor in chief of the Yale Daily News. He studied political science, history, and economics, graduating with honors in 1950.

In 1950, Buckley married Patricia Alden Austin Taylor, and as a major proponent of marriage, Mr. Buckley practiced what he preached, having been married himself for 57 years. In 1951, he was recruited by the CIA while publishing his first book, God and Man at Yale. He would later go on to write a volume of novels, over 50 more, featuring topics ranging from history to sailing. Most everyone knows him for his hosting of the PBS show, Firing Line, where he displayed a scholarly, light-hearted style.

In February of 2008, Bill Buckley was found dead at his home in Stamford, Connecticut. Let us remember him for his great oratory skills, his admirable journalism, and his overall commitment to social activism. Mr. Buckley is known for a number of views, ranging from drug legalization to opposition of the Iraq war, and whether you agreed or disagreed with him, you must recognize him for being a spirited man, well thought in his opinions, and loyal to his country.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.