“Buckley’s old-fashioned answering service! I still answer my own phone!” The gleeful voice rang out. If I heard it once in the 24 years that Tom Buckley and I were colleagues at the University of Tulsa, I heard it a thousand times. In a variety of ways, it captured the man. It reflected his wit, his irreverence, and his sense of fun; it betrayed his lack of pretentiousness and hinted at his capacity for mischief; and it suggested that he was a bit of a ham. One could imagine him dressing up in a tuxedo, sauntering into a classroom with a bottle and glass on a tray, and interrupting a junior colleague’s lecture with the greeting: “Your ale, Madame! And I have been told to wish you a very happy birthday.” One could imagine him pausing in the midst of one of his own lectures to pull a card from his shoe and announce that he had just produced a footnote. And he was perfectly capable of responding to an invitation to the wedding of a much-married friend by sending a note of regret, saying, “I’m sorry that I cannot make it this time, but I will be sure to be there the next time that you wed.”

Thomas H. Buckley, who died on 24 February, was an old-fashioned professor. He was a scholar of ability and distinction, a teacher of genius, and he was always around—available for consultation by colleagues, friends, students, and former students (who always came to see Buckley before dropping in on anyone else). To him, they came to discuss the essays on which they were working, the “ins” and “outs” of national politics, their job prospects, their love lives or the lack thereof (a topic on which Tom was highly knowledgeable), and many another subjects.

Moreover, Tom wrote his first book on a codebreaker, and he had a gift for nosing out what was going on. If you heard a rumor about machinations in the college administration or the city (especially if there was scandal involved), you could be certain that he knew more than you did, and he was more than willing to pass on the latest intelligence. “Never,” he said, “underestimate the strangeness of this place.”

Above all, however, Tom Buckley trafficked in encouragement. Countless students owed their fascination with history to him. He rarely, if ever, refused to do a reading course with a student eager to learn; and, if he detected a serious interest in history on anyone’s part, he did everything that he could to enable that individual to get into a good graduate school and enter the profession. As a teacher and mentor, Tom was anything but a slacker, and the volume published a few years ago in his honor is testimony to the gratitude felt by its contributors. That volume is the distinguished tip of a very large iceberg, for graduates of the University of Tulsa indebted to Tom Buckley are as numerous as the sands on the shore; and, as is only appropriate, the volume reflected the range of Tom’s interests.

First and foremost, Tom Buckley was a diplomatic historian—interested in the play of interests, passions, and personalities that eventuates in war and in peace. His teaching was not, however, limited to his field of expertise. For a considerable period of time, he taught the history of the Far East, and throughout his career he not only taught the full gamut of American history; he reveled in it. Nor was Tom apt to let narrow disciplinary concerns get in his way. When he was not in class, he was in his office; and if he was alone and did not have papers to grade, he was reading a book—and not necessarily a book in his field.

When he read through the pages published in his honor, if he felt even the slightest tinge of regret, it would have been due to the fact that, none of his academic offspring saw fit to take on Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and William Jefferson Clinton, American presidents for whom he long entertained a hearty dislike. Whenever he went to Washington, DC, Tom stopped by the Washington cathedral to give Wilson’s tomb the kick that he thought it deserved.

His colleagues at the University of Tulsa sorely miss him, as I have in the years since I left; and, in the future, students who enroll at that institution will not realize what they have missed—which is a lot. Among other things, there will be no one at the university who leaves callers nonplussed by answering the phone, “Buckley’s old-fashioned answering service.”