Why Is George Frederick Will Important

George Frederick Will, 73, is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Have I piqued your interest yet? Well, there is more. He has been called ‘perhaps the most powerful journalist in America’ by the Wall Street Journal. He has had a first marriage that ended in a divorce that was pretty much a train-wreck. He was educated at Princeton and Oxford. You get the picture, don’t you? George Will, in many ways, is two heads of a coin at the same time – there is the unflinching respectability that comes with being America’s most revered conservative journalist, then there is the inevitable criticism that is doled out at him, and finally, there is that disastrous first marriage. To put it all in one sentence, this man can single-handedly make sure that the gossip columnists of the country are fed and clothed for quite some time.
The two met when Madeleine was 16 and working parents’ cafeteria near Trinity College, where George was a 20 year old scholarship student. He was captivated by her ‘unusual self-possession’ – as put by Will himself – and they started dating soon after. It took a while, however, for Madeleine to go from girlfriend to wife, as a result of George’s academic pursuits that spanned two continents. But finally, in 1967, the couple were married, followed by a make-shift honeymoon where they drove from West Hartford to Michigan State, where he had a teaching job. The Wills have come a long way from there – as a result of a series of twists and turns of fate, which involved George being recruited by a Republican Senator in 1970 – to being two of the most recognisable faces in