Priscilla Buckley

Associated with National Review for more than four decades, was its managing editor from 1959 to 1985. The third of 10 children of William Frank Buckley, an oil executive, and the former Aloïse Steiner, Priscilla Langford Buckley, familiarly known as Pitts, was born in New York City on Oct. 17, 1921. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Smith College in 1943. The next year she joined United Press, as the news service was then known, writing copy for the radio news desk from its New York office. When National Review’s original managing editor, Suzanne La Follette, retired, Miss Buckley was recommended for the post by Whittaker Chambers, a Communist-turned-conservative who was a member of the editorial board. After stepping down as managing editor, Miss Buckley was a senior editor at the magazine until her formal retirement in 1999. Miss Buckley, who never married, is survived by two brothers — James L. Buckley, a retired federal judge who, as a member of the Conservative Party, represented New York in the United States Senate from 1971 to 1977, and F. Reid Buckley — and a sister, Carol Buckley. William F. Buckley Jr., the sixth of the Buckley siblings, died in 2008.