The Acton Institute, and I personally, have lost one of our most enduring and earliest friends in the peaceful (and I am told, beautiful – if such a word can be used) death of Karen Laub-Novak, wife of our long-time collaborator and mentor Michael Novak.

During the time I lived in Washington, D.C., some 25 years ago, the Novak dinner table became a veritable salon of the free society. As Michael would be mixing up his magical Manhattans (where I learned to make them), Karen and I would be busy in the kitchen churning out Italian dishes: antipasti, pollo caccitore, broccolini in padella – all served into the midst of sparkling conversations and debates around that table. Here were the likes of Clare Booth Luce holding formidable court against Bill Bennett, Irving Kristol and his wife Gertrude Himmelfarb; Bob and Mary Ellen Bork would be conversing with the late Jack and Joan Kemp or Charles and Robyn Krauthammer.

Karen, an artist of note, had a natural ability in such an intellectually charged atmosphere to exude an infallible and gracious hospitality, making anyone who visited her domain feel fully at home.

A bit of beauty has gone out of the world in Karen’s passing. RIP.