And the King said unto his servants, “Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel.” (II Samuels 3:38)
This is the feeling about my oldest friend, Dr. Lee Edwards, who went to his heavenly reward Dec. 12, 2024. A prince and a great man.
In the summer of 1961, I went to New York City to become the executive secretary of Young Americans for Freedom, the rag tag group of college conservatives who met at William F. Buckley’s house in Sharon, Connecticut, in 1960 to launch the modern-day conservative movement. Lee was a founding member of Young Americans for Freedom and a member of the board of directors.
Thus began a lifelong, deep, and strong friendship.
We had so much in common—same age, both strong, conservative, anti-Communist, Catholics—consumed with saving Western civilization.
In early 1975, I mailed promotion letters for a new magazine I wanted to launch—Conservative Digest. My vision was to produce a monthly publication providing leadership, news, information, action items, for the new political movement known as the New Right.
As the subscriptions started to pour in, I began to realize I had no magazine. Almost in a panic, I called Lee and said, “Help.” Lee became the first editor of Conservative Digest and for the next 10 years, it had more subscribers and received more media attention than any other conservative publication.
Earlier this year, Lee was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer but led an active life until recent weeks.
At his death, he was busy writing his 26th book, “Ten Unsung Heroes of the Conservative Movement.” His list did not include himself, but on my short list of conservative unsung heroes, would be Lee Edwards.
I was fortunate to be with Lee numerous times in recent months. A few months ago, we sat next to each other at a dinner of national conservatives. For two hours we made plans to begin a new project of recording the history of the conservative movement by interviewing those who were there at the beginning in the 1960s and 1970s.
After his cancer diagnosis, Morton Blackwell offered the use of his Leadership Institute’s film studio with camera and crew for Lee to be interviewed by his daughter, Elizabeth Spalding, chairman of Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and myself for about two hours.
Lee spoke long and eloquently about the earliest days of the conservative movement, including comments on his father, Willard who was a well-known journalist for the Chicago Tribune, and the founder of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and Human Events magazine in the 1950s.
The stories kept coming from his role in 1964 as director of public information for the Goldwater for President campaign through the early years of the conservative movement, including the 1960s and 1970s when conservatives were in the wilderness up until Ronald Reagan’s election as president in 1980.
Lee’s work continued until his death. He chronicled the movement and his vision was that our fight to win the Cold War and the horrors of communism must be told. His living legacy will be the Victims of Communism Museum and Foundation now opened in Washington, D.C. On display there are the atrocities that Josef Stalin and every leader of the Soviet Union perpetrated on their own people since. Communism has caused the death of more than 94 million people who were executed, starved to death, forced in slave labor or sent to war by its leaders.
Anticommunism is one of the unifying and founding principles of the conservative movement.
Lee and his wife Anne were perfectly yoked. I knew Anne a few years before Lee as she was a leader in New York City’s Young Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom. It was her idea for Lee to start the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
Lee was an indispensable player in the founding and development of today’s Conservative Movement. As St. Paul said about himself in 2nd Timothy, 4:7, “I have fought the good fight; I’ve finished the race; I’ve kept the faith. Now waiting for me is the crown of righteousness … ” I paraphrase and say this, “Lee fought the good fight; Lee finished the race; Lee kept the faith. Now waiting for Lee Edwards is the crown of righteousness.”
At his death, Dec. 12, 2024, 11 days past his 92nd birthday, in addition to being known, admired, and respected by the leaders of the conservative movement of the last 60-plus years, Lee was known by many as “001”—meaning he had been active at the national level of the conservative movement longer than any living conservative.
If you didn’t like Lee Edwards, you didn’t like people. I’ve not known a better role model in my 91 years.
Rest in peace dear friend.