Buckley recalls childhood in Sharon

Brian Ross interviewed James Buckley on behalf of the Sharon Historical Society’s oral history project on Sept. 14, 2022.

Brian Ross: On behalf of the Sharon Historical Society, a warm welcome to a man who has spent much of his life from childhood on in Sharon. And for somebody who wanted to be a country lawyer went on to serve his country as a Navy officer in World War Two in the Pacific, a United States senator, under-secretary of State and a federal appellate judge in the D.C. Circuit. James Buckley, thank you so much. How does one refer to somebody who’s had all those positions? Judge? Senator?

Jim Buckley: As Jim how’s that?

BR: Jim Buckley, thank you so much for being here. And as we speak, you’ve just turned 98 years old and gone through a successful hip surgery. How are you feeling?

JB: So far ok. I’m on the right course, which could take some time for the muscles rediscover what they’re supposed to be doing but I’ll be getting there.

BR:  And of course, you are also an esteemed member of our historical society in Sharon. Let me start by asking you, how did the Buckley family come to be in Sharon?

JB: A total oddity. My father was a Texan, from South Texas.  He grew up in a small town there. My mother is from New Orleans. My father fell in love with Mexico, became a lawyer, went to Mexico, oil was discovered, and he became a lawyer for the oil companies and focused on the land and the oil business. My father was also  a person of opinions, which he expressed freely  - with the result that in time he was expelled from Mexico, but by that time he had created the company was involved in this area of the oil business, and there he was, newly married.

And you know, he was in his late 30s by then. What do you do? He spoke Spanish. The oil was discovered in Venezuela. Well, if you’re going to put the pieces together, you need something called money. Where is money? Wall Street. So my Southern parents suddenly found themselves in New York City. In due course, I was born there, the fourth of ten children. And in my third month, they had the good sense to move to Sharon, Connecticut. And that is where Sharon came into my heart where it still lives.

BR:  That’s so wonderful to hear. Tell me your remembrances of being a child in Sharon. What was that like? What was it like to grow up in Sharon ?

JB: The best I can do is time to talk about being a teenager in Sharon in the 1930s. That is some time ago. By that time, Sharon had shrunk to, I think about 1800 people in 80 square miles, 60 square miles. But the peculiar thing about Sharon in those days was it was divided into very different groups. There were quote “the natives” , the people who worked the farms and all the rest of it and “the summer people.”

The “summer people” consisted of about 20 or 30 New York City families who, after schools closed in New York City, would move the entire household into one of these nice houses on South Main Street and so forth in Sharon, where they’d spend lovely summers, and then after Labor Day, they would disappear for whatever reason.

Although the Buckleys were in Sharon 12 months a year, I was educated in private schools the way that some of the people were. And so, in effect, I grew up with the “summer people”, although I was an honorary native. The summer people had their own social life and so forth. They had the Sharon Country Club and take it from there.

Why were there so many New York families doing this? And I think to get the answer to that, you have to go back to Sharon’s particular history. Unlike most of the towns in that general area and Litchfield County and so forth, Sharon was not settled by people who wanted to farm.

The people were drawn there because of the discovery of iron ore, abundant around 1700 and so on, iron ore along the border between Connecticut and New York. This drew entrepreneurs into Sharon Valley where they settled for many years, over 100 years, lively manufacturing.

So important inventions were made there. They made mousetraps. They also made explosive shells for the Civil War and so on. But you had a group of prosperous people who built nice homes in Sharon. And then by the end of the 1800s, the iron played out, all of those little industries kind of dying away. And there was Sharon sitting as an immaculate, pristine New England town with an inventory of nice houses that was beyond commuting distance from anywhere. Therefore, it couldn’t be spoiled by all kinds of new housing developments, etc., and that, for whatever reason, seemed to draw this category of New Yorkers.

And In in those days, no weekenders you never heard of, you didn’t know any weekenders. There were all the “summer people” who became part of Sharon in their own way and had their impact on Sharon.

One interesting impact had to do with the fact that, five or six of the New York doctors with homes in Sharon were very prominent in their professions while in New York. And during the the early thirties, this Sharon doctor, I forget what his name was, felt the need for kind of a nursing home. He was able to talk it up with the New Yorkers, who provided the backing, whatever it was that it required, they gave us what is now Sharon Hospital.

BR: And what’s your memory of what? What did the town look like as a teenager in the 1930? Did it look different than it is now?

JB: The significant difference between the Sharon I grew up in 80 years ago, 90 years ago, and what we have today is no elm trees. The Sharon Green was surrounded by two columns of magnificent Elms. They got destroyed when the Dutch elm disease went through there. But the buildings were almost identical. Some of them painted different colors. But that’s about it visually. That is about the only change. And that’s part of the charm that has brought people to Sharon.

BR: What did you and your brothers and sisters do to pass the hours during the summer? What did you do to get in trouble?

JB: There are ten of us and we’ve made all kinds of trouble within the ten of us. We had sort of a mischievous streak that bothered some of the neighbors, I must confess. But you do what kids do in the country, climb trees and things that children aren’t allowed to do anymore.

But we were with the children of the “summer people” and two of the fathers who organized Saturday morning baseball games on the property just to the east, on the borders of the town clock. And there we had the dirty shirts versus ... ooh, my memory. Anyway, we had a kind of fun the kids have. We had ponies, which we rode around on. We learned to in season to ice skate and things of that sort. It was a healthy, plain country existence.

BR:  And in town, during the time you were a child, do you recall were there any big fires, big storms, big calamities?

JB:  Do I remember any big storms? Yes, we had in 1938 a horrendous storm. That threw down trees all the way up as far as Sharon and beyond. It was impossible to drive to Amenia New York from Sharon for about three days because that was all floodwater. Yes, we had a break. And the winters were a lot more brutal than what was in recent years. It was not unusual to have 15, 20 degrees below zero.

And we naturally did what people do when there’s snow  — sleds and things of that sort. But anyway, it was, you know, a normal child’s existence.

BR:  And at the time you were growing up, did you have the appreciation that you were a privileged family?

JB: I guess we did, yes.

BR:  And who are some of your close friends? Some or some of the other families you can recall back then?

JB:  I mean, my closest friends was this fellow called Dean Witt whose father, incidentally, was a New York doctor and who built a house up in Sharon Mountain. Bill Coley, the son and grandson of another doctor. Don Emory, Bill Truax. A nice group of kids that we got along well. And the one thing that distinguished my particular group. None of them ever smoked. And with the result of it, I never smoked and never put to that temptation. And of course, in those days, things like pot were totally unknown.

BR:  You went off to war to serve the country and the US Navy or others in Sharon also going off to war. Do you recall those times?

JB: Yeah. After Pearl Harbor, people my age had no doubt whatsoever as to what they would be doing next. They didn’t have to worry about, Are you going to be an engineer? Are you going to be a doctor or whatever, you see. You were either drafted or you signed on the line. And I signed for the Navy, and so I ended up in the Pacific on an L.S.D.

BR: And when you came back home, it was back to school and to Sharon?

JB:  Well, I came back. I graduated from college at the Pearl Harbor. I signed up with the Navy program and the college itself accelerated. So I actually got my degree, although in my last semester I was in a Navy uniform. So that was behind me. And then I decided floating around in the Pacific that what I wanted to do with my life, and it was to be a country lawyer in Sharon, Connecticut. So, I went to law school at Yale. And then things did not work out quite the way I had planned.

BR: In your book, you call it an unplanned life. You were happy, just letting things take their own course.

JB: Well there are interventions here or there. The first one was I went to work with a New Haven lawyer to get the credentials that would enable me to then open an office and share it and present myself to somebody who is not totally green in legal matters.

But I got persuaded by my brother John to join my family’s business, which had to do with working with small oil companies looking for oil outside the United States. So I spent the next 17 years as a businessman, with four days in New York City and three days in Sharon, Connecticut, I’m happy to say. So that connection was never severed. And then strange things happened.

I had an exotic brother called Bill, who managed to turn parts of the world upside down, and he decided to run for mayor of New York City as the candidate of New York’s Conservative Party, to point out how some government would really handle a great big metropolis as opposed to with the Republican and Democratic candidates would do. He asked me to be his campaign manager. I knew nothing about politics, but he wanted to have a buffer between himself and the eager beavers of the Conservative Party that wanted to occupy too much of his time. And in due course, somebody two years later suggested that I run for the Senate of the United States. So that’s how I got into politics.

BR: Tell me about that race.

JB: That was against the record. Jacob Javits, utterly unbeatable. The Conservative Party was able to raise $180,000 for a statewide race, but for peculiar reasons and because I had access to all of the debates and so forth, I ended up with 17% of the vote. And then by this time, students were burning  flags and all kinds of other things that happened in the late sixties. And two years later, I decided that I call it my Boy Scout impulse to say, ‘ Well, maybe I should try to seriously run for the Senate.’ I was able to get the support needed and won in a three-way race.

BR: And that was where you made history when you did that. And what was it like? The young man from Sharon who wanted to be a country lawyer, ended up as one of the 100 most powerful men or women.

JB: A different landscape yet.

BR: And then you also ran for the Senate in Connecticut?.

JB: I did. I was rejected by New York voters after six years. And I had some things I wanted to finish that i wanted to finish so I ran in Connecticut, and that did not work.

BR:  And at this time, you continue to come back to Sharon. You were one of the weekenders then, right?

JB: I was one of the weekenders, right. That was the new phenomenon. They did not exist, I can’t think of a single friend I had in Sharon growing up that was a weekender.

BR: And what was the town like as it came through the Kennedy administration?

JB: It was the same. People changed and some businesses were formed. Others went out of business. There was no longer a blacksmith to make shoes for your pony. I think that that showed the character of the town was pretty much the same.

BR:  And throughout this time, you remained active in politics, as did other members of your family. Tell me about some of them and their lives in Sharon .

JB: Well, they were all bright interesting people. My the oldest one of us is my sister Aloise, who is a mother of ten, herself. She did a lot of writing, she was a beautiful writer and she wrote articles and so on. Brother John is in the family business and stayed with it. He also made sure that the rough grouse population in Northwest Connecticut was kept in proper balance. My sister Priscilla became managing editor of National Review as a journalist and top person. Your servant, James who lived in lived in Sharon,  raised  his kids there.  Brother Bill, who was an editor and a publisher.  A lot of writing in the family.

BR:  During the Reagan administration, you served as Undersecretary of State. To what extent did your upbringing in Sharon shape your values as you approached that position?

JB: My upbringing in Sharon taught me the wonders of the American Constitution, the way governmental powers were distributed by the Constitution, the wonders performed by the American experiment, and the importance of preserving its fundamentals intact.

How does that apply in foreign policy? Totally different in foreign policy (chuckles).

BR: You’re one of the few people to serve in such senior positions in all three branches of government. In the judiciary, in Congress, and in the executive branch. That’s quite an accomplishment.

JB:  According to Wiki - wiki whatever - there are 46 of us.

BR:  Which of those positions that you enjoy the most?

JB:  If your basic interest is in matters of public policy there could not have been a finer job than to have been a United States senator  50 to  100 years ago when the federal government was limiting itself to those areas assigned to a public constitution.

But it was the volume of things taken on by Congress, the splintering of interests that make it terribly hard  to focus on those things you wanted to get done, focus how to get there, and so on. So I had decided that had I had a second term, that would have been it.

BR:  With your brother Bill and your sister Priscilla and yourself you really helped shape the future of the Republican Party. Is  that fair to say?

JB:  Actually, the phrase is “conservative movement,” which is distinct from the Conservative Party. In the days that I was in the Senate, which I think was true of most of American history, you didn’t have one Republican Party, you had 50 Republican parties. Each state had its own kind of approach and so forth, which gave you a lot of flexibility to argue around and persuade and show for it.

I voted more often with seven Democrats than I did for northeastern Republicans. Why Southern Democrats? Because we understood the limitations on the spread of federal authority. States rights, in other words.

BR: And Sharon was was one of the birthplaces of the modern conservative movement that helped form a movement to bring Ronald Reagan into the into office. Is that fair to say?

There was a gathering in Sharon where the conservatives sort of decided what was needed ?

JB: Yeah, there was a youth movement that brother Billy kind of launched and there was a great big meeting, and it’s something called “The Sharon Statement” setting out a set of principles. And if you are interested, if you’re in Sharon and are interested in the Sharon Statement, you can go on the property dividing Great Elm from and the property next to it. And there’s a great big bronze plaque and you can satisfy your historic interest.

BR: And that that was a pivotal moment in American politics, wasn’t it?

JB: At the time, it was interesting and not insignificant.

BR: Was there any point where you thought, maybe I’ll go back and become a country lawyer in Sharon or that ship has sailed?

JB: That kind of escaped me.

BR: And then your appointment to the judiciary. Did you continue to come to Sharon during those times?

JB: I would come weekends. You know, I was working in Washington and my kids would be in Sharon.

BR: What sort of changes have there been in the character of the town of Sharon in the last 20, 30 years that you like and that you don’t necessarily appreciate?

JB: Yes, when I was growing up, it was a farming community. I think there were 40 dairies. Somebody told me that only one or two of them now.  All kinds of areas that were growing corn or use as pasture and suddenly little houses are popping up here and there.

And I think there are other ways in which it changed, with the development of the Sharon Hospital and move to the concentration on the area of medicine. That’s a very significant change in the character of the town.

BR: And how about your own family? You and your wife raised children in Sharon. How was that? How was their childhood different than what you went through, what you had in Sharon?

JB: Not that much different than we had. Didn’t have as many brothers and sisters to play with, only six.

But touch football, baseball, wandering around the landscape. They also went to private schools. Uh, they’re members of the Sharon Country Club.

BR:  Are there aspects of sharing that you have seen disappear in addition to the farming for the most part, but not all together?

JB: I’d say the farming was a significant factor. I remember milk truck after milk truck , coming down from Ellsworth back in the old days.

Also on Mudge Pond sawing ice, great big blocks of ice. And I recall the ice man bringing blocks of ice for the ice box in our kitchen.

BR:  And was there a milkman who came around?

JB: Actually, we had our own cow.

BR: Were there any aspects about Sharon that were less than favorable as you were growing up? Some have talked about religious bias and unwelcoming to certain faiths.

JB: Well, I was a Catholic and this Southern Catholic family moved in. We’re sort of oddities in that respect, but nothing that would bother me. I never felt bias.

BR: As a part of the Sharon Historical Society. it’s been our wonderful task to talk to people who’ve lived there over the years. Any other memories you want to sort of for posterity for us to think about? And what should people who are coming to Sharon now and our new to the town, what should they know about Sharon that would keep the character the same?

JB: I haven’t focused on it in any way.

BR: When you left, did you have any concerns about the growth? What might become that would not be so wonderful?

JB: Oh, that’s my greatest fear.Throw in big shopping malls or something of that sort. A large housing development naturally the character of the place inherently changes. Right now, it is a little piece from the past. Now I know that sentiment of that sort shouldn’t control, but I’m glad it’s still the way it is.

BR: And it was a difficult decision to leave Sharon.

JB: It was a necessary decision. My nearest child was three and a half hours away. I can no longer drive. My wife died, and I have a lovely son, who lives in Virginia, and so I’m happy here.

BR: Judge Jim, is there anything else you’d like to add?

JB:  If you were highly social and loved dances and things, Sharon might not be the place to grow up.

But if you loved to walk in the woods and you loved to hunt and fish, and you liked to play and climb trees I can’t think of a better place.