Roger Starr 1918–2001

Roger Starr, City Journal's editor from 1992 to 1993 and a contributor to the magazine since its birth 12 years ago, died in September at the age of 83. An urbane and genial native New Yorker, Yale-educated and one of the founding generation of neo-conservatism, Starr had run his father's barge company, served as the city's Housing Commissioner, and been a member of the New York Times's editorial board in a long and varied career. The insights of his 1985 book, The Rise and Fall of New York City—that the expense of the vast municipal welfare state and the social pathology it encouraged threatened to kill Gotham—greatly influenced the worldview of City Journal at its founding. Ours is one of the many institutions on which he left an indelible stamp.