Peter Schramm was an immigrant to this country, and he loved it in the way only those who have good characters and have seen despotism can. His family came from Hungary in 1956, like so many others. He was a boy, and just old enough to remember the trauma of the escape and the difficult decisions it imposed on the family. His mother, father, and sister found their lives here and were forever grateful.

I met Peter in graduate school in 1974. He was already the man the world later came to know: bold, large, blustery, kind, sentimental, and perceptive. He was as good a friend as a man could have. He had big ideas even then, most of them concerned with saving the country and living as a civilized man. Once, I remember, we shared drinks and exchanged concerns about paying back our student loans. He raised his glass of cheap wine and remarked: We prefer to live as gentlemen. The loans had probably bought the wine.

Peter helped to found the Claremont Institute, and he was its leader at the beginning. So much of it owed to his imagination and readiness to take risks. We involved in its founding remain friends to this day, and we’ve lost someone especially precious in Peter.

Read the article “In Memoriam: Peter Schramm, 1946-2015” on nationalreview.com.