Appropriately, as news of Paul Weyrich's passing broke this morning, one conservative leader after another has released statements lauding him as a giant of the conservative movement, and rightfully so.
It would be disingenuous for me to comment too extensively, because outside of a few casual introductions at events, I didn’t know the man – certainly not as well as some who are blogging obituaries this morning. But I do know some things about Paul Weyrich that you might not see anywhere else, so I’ll share those.
The first is about his professional life. Most media outlets, in summing up Weyrich’s accomplishments, will list him as a founding father of the Heritage Foundation and most recently as the head of the Free Congress Foundation (FCF). They likely won’t go into much detail about his work leading the Kreible Foundation, an arm of FCF that helped train anti-communist dissidents in Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Often, this work meant putting his life on the line by sneaking into Communist controlled territories to conduct training seminars. That’s why Weyrich didn’t have to quote Ronald Reagan in each of his columns and speeches to identify as as a conservative – he walked the walk. When he came to Washington as a Senate press secretary, he was dismayed that those who shared his conservative views had no infrastructure to expand their power, so he went about creating it – and beyond the Heritage Foundation and FCF, that also meant organizing meetings of activists and leaders to determine strategies and coordinate efforts.
Second, more personally, I did get to know and work with one of Paul’s sons, Steve Weyrich – a skilled video specialist who works at Heritage now. Steve was one of the people who got me interested in the political power of video. More importantly, from my experiences with him he’s a hard worker and a dedicated family man. For Paul Weyrich, I can think of no finer monument to his time on Earth.
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