Kate O’Beirne

Kate Monica Walsh was born in Brooklyn on Sept. 23, 1949, to Matthew Walsh and the former Catharine Rice. Her father and his brother-in-law owned Jimmy Ryan’s, a jazz nightclub in Manhattan. She was raised in Manhasset. She was steeped in conservatism from the start. Her father was a charter subscriber to National Review. She served in the Department of Health and Human Services under President Ronald Reagan; was deputy director of domestic policy studies and vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation; and was Washington editor and wrote the “Bread and Circuses” column for National Review under its founding editor, William F. Buckley Jr. For 11 years she sparred with Robert Novak, Albert Hunt, Mark Shields and Margaret Carlson on “The Capital Gang.” She was also a substitute host on “Crossfire” on CNN and a commentator on “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” on PBS. In 2005, after 10 years as National Review’s Washington editor, she became president of the National Review Institute, a research and advocacy organization, a post she held for six years. She studied at Good Counsel College in White Plains (later the College of White Plains, which merged with Pace University), where she earned a degree in English and journalism. She worked in Washington for Senator James L. Buckley (a brother of William), who was elected from New York in 1970 on the Conservative Party line, then returned to New York to get a degree from St. John’s University School of Law. In 1976 she married James O’Beirne, an Army officer who became a White House liaison with the Pentagon. He survives her, as do their two sons, Phil and John; her sisters, Mary Ann, Virginia and Rosemary; and several grandchildren.