I never met William F. Buckley, but he’s probably more responsible for shaping my political views than anyone except my dad.
It was my dad who introduced me to Buckley’s magazine, National Review, when I was a teenager. At first I was mainly interested in the political cartoons and the always funny "The Week" (a collection of short comments on the events of the past two weeks [yes, two, because the magazine came out fortnightly rather than weekly]), but I then started reading the longer articles, including Buckley’s columns.
It was because of National Review that one of my answers on a 10th-grade English quiz was marked wrong. Part of the quiz consisted of a list of words, and we had to mark whether the word has a positive or negative connotation. One of the words was liberal, and I naturally marked it as having a negative connotation. My teacher marked that answer as wrong, so I argued it after class. She said the connotations were positive because the word liberal was associated with good things. I pointed out that for conservatives like me, the word liberal was associated with bad things, so its connotations were negative, not positive. She finally gave me the point.
Anyway, what I really want to say is that I was sorry to hear that Buckley passed away today. He will be missed.