It is easy for newspapers to pen dry remembrances of significant people who died in the past year, but it is harder and more important to identify those whose lives and work we should honor or emulate.
From wide-ranging fields, let us pay special homage to the following Americans for contributions to the common culture, with extra weight for some who advanced ideals generally described, in modern parlance, as conservative and, thus, in our view, more modest, historically literate, and conducive to happiness.
In that light, starting with those overtly active in the political or policy worlds, please remember Richard Allen, who served well in former President Richard Nixon’s White House before becoming former President Ronald Reagan’s first national security adviser, and he played a key role in developing Reagan’s plans not just to contain Soviet communism but to 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. Former 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 fight against and defeat of the evil Soviet empire and its pernicious ideology.
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 philanthropist, conservationist, and Eagle Forum activist both for traditional values and for Reagan’s peace-through-strength policies on intercontinental missiles. Former Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman was no conservative, but he was a principled statesman who stood tall for national defense and forged fertile alliances with conservatives on saving sacred spaces and preserving other realms of the common culture. And former President Jimmy Carter, who is too often remembered for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian hostage crisis, and long lines at gas stations. Carter was guilty of thinking too well of other people. But he also did good. He worked with Congress to deregulate the airline, trucking, and railroad industries, the initial moves that would expand and blossom during the Reagan presidency and result in the 1980s economic boom.
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 social media feed was conservative. Actors Louis Gossett Jr. and James Earl Jones, a devout Catholic, military veteran, and patriot, graced the 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 shuttle Challenger, then the first commander of the Naval Space Command, and then NASA administrator, among other distinguished positions. 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 nonstop 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.
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Former Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Andy Russell played in 169 consecutive games, earned an MBA, became a leading entrepreneur and investment guru, and ran a charitable foundation that raised millions of dollars for an extraordinary range of medical causes. And former 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 mathematical theory, Ryan led academic institutions and showed an eminently practical bent. It was he who, as director of information services for the U.S. House of Representatives, designed the chamber’s first electronic voting system half a century ago, cutting vote times from 45 minutes to 15.
Finally, there was the incomparable Willie Mays, perhaps the single greatest midcentury cultural touchstone in American sports, the subject of pop songs, and responsible for more than a few of the most famous quips in athletics history. Actress Tallulah Bankhead said: “There have only been two geniuses in the world — Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.”) In a time of great racial tension, this virtuoso of the baseball diamond transcended it all, saying he concentrated on “changing hatred to laughter.” These are people who led luminous lives. Hats off to them — with gratitude.