Irving Kristol, 1920-2009

In memoriam.

by William Kristol
The Weekly Standard
10/05/2009, Volume 015, Issue 03
http://www.weeklystandard.com/


The following remarks were delivered by William Kristol at the funeral service for Irving Kristol, Congregation Adas Israel, Washington, D.C., September 22, 2009.

In 1994, my father wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal titled "Life Without Father." It dealt with the subject of the family and poverty and welfare--with my father drawing for his argument, as he so often did, on a combination of social science, common sense, history, and personal experience. In the course of the article, my father briefly discussed his father, Joseph Kristol--who, he wrote, "was thought by all our relatives and his fellow workers to be wise, and fair, and good. I thought so too."

So have Liz and I always thought about our father. To us, he was wise, and fair, and good. I honestly don't think it ever occurred to us that we could have had a better father. So as we enter the rest of our life--a life without our father--we are overwhelmed not by a sense of loss or grief, though of course we feel both, but by a sense of gratitude: Having Irving Kristol as our dad was our great good fortune.

Now my father would often speak of his own great good fortune. That was meeting my mother. Shortly after graduating from City College, my father--a diligent if already somewhat heterodox Trotskyist--was assigned to attend the meetings of a Brooklyn branch of the young Trotskyists. As my father later wrote, the meetings were farcical and pointless, as they were intended to recruit the proletarian youths of Bensonhurst to a cause they were much too sensible to take seriously. But the meetings turned out not to be entirely pointless, because my father met my mother there. They were married, and remained happily married--truly happily married, thoroughly happily married--for the next 67 years.

Dan Bell, who knew my parents for that whole span, called my parents' marriage "the best marriage of [his] generation." I only knew my parents for 56 years, so I can't speak with Dan's authority--and my first couple of years with my parents are something of a blur. But I know enough confidently to endorse his judgment.

During the 1960s and 1970s, when Liz and I were growing up, everything is supposed to have become complicated and conflicted and ambiguous. Not so with respect to my parents' love for each other. Or with respect to the love and admiration that Liz and I--and, later, Caleb and Susan--had for my father. Our love for him was always straightforward, unambivalent, and unconditional.

As was the love of his five grandchildren for him. And as was his love for them. Almost seven years ago, my father was scheduled for lung surgery. As we were talking the night before, my father matter-of-factly acknowledged the possibility he might not survive. And, he said, he could have no complaints if that were to happen. "I've had such a lucky life," he remarked. (Actually, I'm editing a bit since we're in a house of worship. He said, "I've had such a goddam lucky life.")

But, he said, it would be just great to get another five years--in order to see the grandchildren grow up. That wish of his was granted. He got almost seven years. So he was able to see Rebecca and Anne and Joe graduate from college. He was able to attend Rebecca and Elliot's wedding. He--a staff sergeant in the Army in World War II--developed a renewed interest in things military, as Joe trained to be, and then was commissioned as, a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps.

And he was able to see Liz's children grow up too, to watch Max and Katy become poised and impressive teenagers--it turns out that's not a contradiction in terms. My father was able to get to know them, and to talk with them, in a way you can't with much younger kids. So that too was a great source of happiness.

Everyone knows of my father's good nature and good humor. He kept that to the end. In the last couple of years, his hearing loss--and the limitations of even the most modern hearing aid technology--sometimes made it difficult for him to understand everything that was being said in a noisy restaurant or a busy place. But he compensated. A few months ago, my parents were out for brunch with the Stelzers and the Krauthammers. After a stretch where he couldn't quite pick up some exchanges between Irwin and Charles, my dad said to the two of them: "I can't hear what you're saying. So I make it up. And," he added, smiling, "sometimes you disappoint me."

But my father was in general not the disappointed sort. It's true that he loved dogs and never had one. But he made up for that by doting on his two granddogs--Liz and Caleb's Sandy, and of course Patches, whom he saw more of because of our proximity. Patches really loved my father--and, as many of you know, Patches is choosy in his affections.

Just a day or so before he slipped from consciousness last week, my father was greeted by one of those well-trained dogs that visit hospitals, in this case a big golden retriever. He patted it and communed with it for a while. Then, as the owner led the dog away, my father commented to us, as if for the ages--"dogs are noble creatures."

My father liked humans too--though I'm not sure he thought they quite rose to the level of dogs as noble creatures. Still, as I look around today, I do wish my father could be here, because he would have so enjoyed seeing and talking with all of you.

In one of the many, many emails and notes I've gotten in the last few days, a friend commented, "When I'd stop by the Public Interest office in the 1980s, your dad would always start a conversation with, 'How's the family?' I suppose that was his standard opener. But I noticed in the last few years, when I'd see him at AEI or somewhere else in D.C., he'd ask about 'the family' and then 'how's everyone?' If I mentioned some former PI editor or writer, he'd beam--as if it were news of his own extended family."

My father's extended family ended up being pretty large. In politics and law and business and journalism, in New York and Washington and elsewhere--even in the strange outposts of modern academe, there are scores, legions--hordes they must seem to those who disapprove of them--who have been influenced, and not just casually, by my father.

How did he do it? I do think that in my father was found an unusual combination of traits--confidence without arrogance; worldly wisdom along with intellectual curiosity; a wry wit and a kindly disposition; and a clear-eyed realism about the world along with a great generosity of spirit. He very much enjoyed his last two decades in Washington, but he had none of the self-importance that afflicts us here. He loved intellectual pursuits, but always shunned intellectual pretension. For example, I don't think I ever heard him use the phrase "the life of the mind," though my father lived a life of the mind.

Beneath the confident wit and the intellectual bravado, my father had a deep modesty. My father spoke with gratitude of his good fortune in life. He wouldn't have claimed to deserve the honors that came his way--though he did deserve them.

Perhaps in part because he was a man who was marked by such a deep sense of gratitude, he was the recipient of much deeply felt gratitude. Even I've been surprised, judging by the emails and phone calls since his death, by the sheer number of those befriended by my father, by the range of those affected by him, by the diversity of those who admired him. I expected the appropriate remarks from distinguished political leaders and professors, and we were moved by eloquent testimonials from people who've known my father well, in some cases for many decades. But what struck all of us in the family were the emails from individuals who met my father only once or twice, but who remembered his kindness or benefited from his counsel--or from people who had never met him, but who were still very much influenced by his writing or other enterprises he was involved in.

For example--this, from a young Capitol Hill aide: "Your father was one of the first people I met, totally by accident, when I went to work at AEI a few years ago. And I will always remember how incredibly gracious and kind he was toward me, an utterly clueless research assistant." Or this, an email forwarded by one of our kids: "Sorry to hear about your grandfather. He was ahead of his time and provided the intellectual underpinnings for the only conservative kid in his Jewish youth group in Tulsa, Oklahoma." Of all the communications my mother and my sister and I have received, I suspect my father might have gotten a particular kick out of that one.

Leon Kass said to me last week, after a final visit to my father: "It's hard to imagine a world without Irving Kristol." So it is. But, as Leon would be the first to say, we're not left simply with a world without Irving Kristol. It's true that his death leaves the world a poorer place. But it's a world made richer by the life he lived, and the legacy he leaves.