The night was June 12, 2007, and Lee Edwards was beaming. After years of work, his personal brainchild was coming to fruition: That day, he had unveiled in Washington a statue, a monument, to the “victims of communism,” as the first step toward a later museum, now thriving, on the same subject. At a major party and dinner that evening, Edwards was surrounded by heroes of the international coalition that defeated Soviet communism and by great leaders bearing witness to the successful struggle.

Edwards, who died Thursday of pancreatic cancer at age 92, was, for more than 65 years, a linchpin of the conservative movement, with his first article in National Review appearing in 1958 and his most recent in the fall of 2023. That 2007 celebration was marked by the very last public speech of NR’s William F. Buckley Jr., who died of emphysema within a year; an address by conservative idea man Jack Kemp; testimonials from Eastern European dissidents; and an extremely moving peroration by the aged Yelena Bonner, who, with her husband, Andrei Sakharov, had bravely agitated for human rights in the Soviet Union.