"It was not a necessary gesture. I didn’t expect it and he was in no way obliged to write it, but write it he did."

Charles Krauthammer, 1950-2018

Anyway, Charles liked the Standard, and he like the work we did, and when I left editing there, he wrote me the nicest letter I have ever received. It was not a necessary gesture. I didn’t expect it and he was in no way obliged to write it, but write it he did. It was the first act of pure kindness he had ever shown me, and it began a friendship—a very distant friendship, but a friendship nonetheless—that would last two decades. Over time he would share bits and pieces of the way he was compelled to live. He told me that the year Ford came out with the van he was able to drive was the greatest liberation of his life. He did love driving that van—and drove it with frightening flourish.