Born on July 7, 1948, in Norwalk, Connecticut, Anthony Rossi Dolan came into the world with ink in his veins and mischief in his bones. His father, Joseph, and mother, Margaret Kelley Dolan, raised a brood that included Tony’s brother Terry, who’d later co-found the National Conservative Political Action Committee. Young Tony was a restless spirit. With a folksy guitar often in hand, he crooned his way through Yale University, graduating in 1970 with a talent already catching eyes, including those of William F. Buckley Jr., who saw a spark in his irreverent prose. Journalism beckoned, and Dolan answered with a vengeance. At 29, as a reporter for the Stamford Advocate, he took on Connecticut’s mobbed-up underbelly, exposing corruption with a fearlessness that earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1978. “I was just a guy with a notebook and a grudge,” he’d later shrug, but that notebook was a battering ram, and the grudge was righteous.

The Reagan orbit came calling soon after. William Casey, Reagan’s campaign chairman, tapped Dolan in 1980, and by March 1981, the lanky wordsmith landed in the White House as a speechwriter. He’d stay for all eight years, the only senior aide to ride the full Reagan trail, rising to chief speechwriter and special assistant. Dolan’s job, he once said, was “to plagiarize Ronald Reagan,” channeling the Gipper’s optimism and steel into words that hit like a freight train. And hit they did. In 1982, addressing Britain’s Parliament, Dolan’s pen envisioned a future that would “leave Marxism and Leninism on the ash heap of history.” A year later, in the “Evil Empire” speech, he branded the Soviet Union with a phrase that rattled gulags and electrified dissidents. Natan Sharansky, locked in a Soviet cell, later recalled the moment Reagan’s words filtered through the prison: “It was a brilliant light in the dark.” Dolan didn’t just write speeches — he forged weapons for the Cold War’s endgame.

His style was pure Tony — cowboy boots clicking through the West Wing, a Jaguar purring in the garage, and a mind that danced between high ideals and streetwise jabs. He’d dodge the spotlight — “staying out of the paper” was his mantra — but when he spoke, you listened. Colleagues marveled at his knack for distilling Reagan’s vision into lines that stuck. The 1987 “Tear Down This Wall” speech was officially penned by protégé Peter Robinson, but Dolan’s fingerprints were there. “Tony was the guy who’d smuggle the dynamite,” a fellow scribe quipped. He didn’t just serve Reagan — he amplified him, turning a Hollywood smile into a global clarion call.

GEORGE FOREMAN, 1949-2025

Dolan’s conservatism wasn’t sclerotic dogma. It was a living thing, rooted in his journalistic pragmatism, his passionate patriotism, and his devout Catholicism. He backed anticrime pushes, drawing on his mob-busting days, and advised GOP titans from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump, whose second inauguration he savored in 2025, scribbling to friends about the “glow and unbounded joy” of the moment. After leaving the White House in 1989, he didn’t retreat but stood firm, writing, consulting, and mentoring with a gusto that kept him in the fray. He penned columns, advised think tanks such as the Hudson Institute, and even flirted with screenplays, his typewriter clacking late into the night. Yet he was no partisan drone. A mentor to countless young writers, he’d growl, “Live a full life — then write about it,” and lived it himself — singing, laughing, and needling the elite with glee. “The expert class hated Reagan,” he once mused, “because he proved them wrong.” Dolan relished that fight, a knight-errant in a town of suits, his ever-present Stetson tipping defiance.

He left us on March 10 in Alexandria, Virginia, slipping away in a city not far from the battles he’d fought. “Tony rode out on a riff,” a friend said, picturing him strumming off into the sunset. It’s a fitting image for a man who gave Reagan his voice, America its resolve, and history a shove. In a world of noise, Dolan’s words still ring, clear, bold, and a little ornery. Heaven’s got a new bard now, and you can bet he’s already rewriting the angels’ lines.

Daniel Ross Goodman is a Washington Examiner contributing writer and the author, most recently, of Soloveitchik’s Children: Irving Greenberg, David Hartman, Jonathan Sacks, and the Future of Jewish Theology in America.