High life | 2 May 2019

Charlottesville is an enchanting Virginia college town graced by the neoclassical architecture of the university’s founder, Thomas Jefferson. I flew there with two friends, the talented photographer Jonathan Becker and the Vietnam Special Forces Silver Star winner Chuck Pfeifer, all of us close buddies of the deceased. It was the memorial service for Willy von Raab, scourge of drug dealers and illegal immigrants while commissioner of customs for eight years under Reagan. The humorist P.J. O’Rourke and I were the two speakers, and after a rousing ‘America the Beautiful’ we retired for an afternoon of southern hospitality and University of Virginia co-ed watching.

This is not woke, I know, but neither are heterosexuality, beauty or grace — or Christianity, for that matter. Charlottesville brought back memories of careless sunlit days lounging around the frat house drinking mint juleps and writing love letters to Sweet Briar girls: Mary Blair Scott, Ellen Hurst, Natalie Farrar, three beguiling sultry southern belles, now in their late seventies or even early eighties.