Editing William F. Buckley (section)

==Early Life and Education==
William Frank Buckley Jr. was born on November 24, 1925, in New York City, to William Frank Buckley Sr., a wealthy oil magnate and lawyer, and Aloise Josephine Steiner, a devout Catholic of Swiss-German descent. The sixth of ten children, Buckley grew up in a privileged, devoutly Catholic, and multilingual household, splitting time between estates in Sharon, Connecticut, and Great Elm, South Carolina. His father’s fortune, amassed in Mexico and Venezuela, and his mother’s piety shaped Buckley’s conservative worldview and cosmopolitan outlook. Raised speaking English, Spanish, and French, he developed a precocious intellect and a flair for debate.

Buckley’s early education was eclectic. At age five, he attended a Catholic kindergarten in Paris, followed by private tutoring in London and Connecticut. In 1939, he enrolled at **St. John’s, Beaumont**, a Catholic preparatory school in England, but returned to the U.S. in 1940 due to World War II. He attended **Millbrook School** in New York, graduating in 1943. In 1944, Buckley briefly studied at the **University of Mexico** before enlisting in the **U.S. Army**, serving as a second lieutenant at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, until his discharge in 1946. He then entered **Yale University**, majoring in political science, English, and economics, and graduated with honors in 1950. At Yale, Buckley chaired the **Yale Daily News**, joined the **Skull and Bones** secret society, and honed his debating skills with the **Yale Debate Association**, clashing with faculty over his staunch anti-socialist views.