As so many have pointed out, all his life, Bill Rusher provided energetic and steady leadership to the conservative movement.
While much appreciated for his wit and wisdom, I was especially grateful for his invaluable support of my efforts to found the Russell Kirk Center after Russell’s death in 1994. He not only agreed to take Russell’s place on the board of the Wilbur Foundation, but he offered the resolution to continue the Foundation’s residential fellows program here under my direction. Now in its thirty-first year, this program has provided hundreds of scholars with lodging, access to an excellent library and a modest stipend while they write their books or dissertations.
In addition, Bill wrote a beautiful tribute to Russell, “Death of a Giant,” in The University Bookman and gave a lecture, “Conservatism’s Third and Final Battle” in the Russell Kirk Memorial Lecture Series at the Heritage Foundation in which he described the battle as between two diametrically opposed “metaphysical dreams of reality.”
Bill was indeed an ally and a friend when I most needed one. He truly deserves the eternal reward he most surely has been given.
—Annette Kirk
