This was not entirely to the good. "Y'all are doingreallocal D.C. She pursued hard the company of the well known. As I began to lead the way down the steps, a bus-size babushkathe usherfixed me with a hard look and said, Nelzya. Impossible. Though Phil knew nothing about the newspaper business -- or any business, for that matter -- his brains and abilities served him well. The Young Publisher, In many ways, Phil was at his very best as a publisher in these years. I was expected to perform all the pulling and hauling; Phil gave directions and put the fun in my life and the childrens. Sometimes you dont really decide, you just move forward, and that is what I didmoved forward blindly and mindlessly into a new and unknown life. My mother seemed to undermine so much of what I did, subtly belittling my choices and my activities in light of her greater, more important ones, she writes. With Grahams support, Bradlee was soon firing the lazy and the mediocre, the racist and the dull, and he then set about raiding topflight papers around the country for their best talent. During his time in D.C., Graham rubbed shoulders with a group of like-minded politicos known as the Georgetown Set, and came to know both Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. There is no doubt that the vast majority of reporters at papers like the Post are themselves more liberal than the general population: a recent poll showed that eighty-nine per cent of Washington-based correspondents voted for Clinton in 1992. After Robert Opel dashed naked across the stage in 1974, he ran for President and settled into the gay leather scene, in the orbit of Robert Mapplethorpe and Harvey Milk. In one case, there were 200 whites arrayed against an equal number of blacks -- with Park Police on horses in the middle. The truth is that I adored him and saw only the positive side of what he was doing for me. My feelings about The Post, however, were very clear. Indeed, the paper was still struggling for its life. Only 15 years later, when things were very bad, did I look at the situation ruefully. Two years later, the Grahams took control of the Post Company stock. Phil's early memoranda to his executives are stunning in their detailed outline of problems, potential, and objectives. With time, Katharine was becoming more and more troubled, less and less secure. CAPTION: Phil Graham, as publisher of The Washington Post, often involved the paper in righting wrongs, as he saw them. A few days later, I was assigned to show her and her close friend Meg Greenfield, the Posts editorial-page editor, around the city that was then known as Leningrad. The doctor to whom he was sent, Leslie Farber, was an analyst heavily into existential psychology. It was all kept very private; our one idea was to conceal what had happened not only from the world but from our friends, my family, and even our children. She went ahead with the publication of the Pentagon Papers, and she backed her reporters and editors during Watergate, when the Post Companys survival was under threat and the paper was all alone in pursuing the story. Philip L. Graham. But that did not mean she was strong in all things. Gradually, I became the drudge and, whats more, accepted my role as a kind of second-class citizen. It was incredibly exciting. I think he felt he'd done such harm the last time around that he just couldn't deal with it, couldn't fix everything. For her part, Katharine would go on to helm the Post, becoming its de facto publisher during the famed Watergate era and, in 1979, becoming the first woman to hold the title officially. Freelancers Guide His friends are, for the most part, not especially famous. Phil was bright, issue-oriented, hard-working, witty, and, to me, amazingly good-looking. Having Phil back was a tremendous -- and tremendously complicated -- relief. We had one small cushion, a $500 wedding present from an aunt, which I thought I would use for extras like theater and travel tickets. He told me that he wanted to preserve our marriage and our family; he said that he loved Robin but would tell her the affair was over, and that he would stay with his family. They were both from the South. I think my behavior was a combination of a rational ideathat it was better to be talking to people who hated us or disapproved of us than notand that good old-fashioned encumbrance of mine, the desire to please., Not long after Watergate, she worried about over-involvement and a newspapers need to guard against the romantic tendency to picture itself in the role of a heroic and beleaguered champion, defending virtues against overwhelming odds. Watergate, she writes, had been an aberration, and I felt we couldnt look everywhere for conspiracies and cover-ups.. {Rauh favored a much broader civil rights bill, but the Senate had watered it down.} Only a few minutes later, there was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors. He felt he owned it because he had worked for 17 years to make it a success, so from his point of view the paper was his. With me in the lead, the three of us walked down a ramp and past what appeared to be a coffin-size box with open slats. Phils greatest successes were in business: buying and absorbing the Times-Herald in 1954, purchasing Newsweek (for a song) in 1961, and making inroads against the dominant paper in town, the Evening Star (which folded in 1981). Some companies thought the Post such a potentially profitable property, and Graham such an unlikely figure to run it, that they came to her with offers to buy it. Beer I had to face facts -- Phil was really gone. Katharine saw her parents only sparingly. Even when Katharine was the publisher of the Post, David Halberstam writes in The Powers That Be, she felt as if she were in her mothers shadow. He was in charge of a losing newspaper in what was rapidly becoming the capital of the world. Local Dining Guide, City Lights He told me that he loved me and said we would be married and go to Florida, if I could live with only two dresses, because I had to understand that he would never take anything from my father and we would live on what he made. In some ways, this was the bottom moment for me -- very confusing, very difficult, and very painful. One doctor told a friend later, "Phil was determined to get out and really was unbelievably masterful in his ability to manipulate people." Why are Vladimir Putins opponents dying? . Otis Chandler and his wife, Missy, met Phil and Robin at the airport. In college at the University of Florida, Phil enjoyed fraternity life, and girls, and he drank a good deal of bathtub gin. There was, of course, no way to press the point. On Jan. 1, 1946, he started his postwar work at the age of 30 as associate publisher of The Post. Graham eventually met Australian journalist Robin Webb, and in 1962 they began an affair. Born: 18-Jul-1915 Birthplace: Terry, SD Died: 3-Aug-1963 Location of death: Marshall, VA Cause of death: Suicide . Money, my fathers being Jewish, and sex were taboo subjects at home. The whole political year of 1960 was very exciting. Her allegiance to democratic capitalism is no less firm than that of William F. Buckley, Jr., and her inherent faith that the establishment lites will do the right thing is nearly absolute. As she grew older and more self-confident, she could be imperious, even frightening to her editors and executives, but her desire to please, or at least to get along with, those in power, never entirely faded. The whole idea of buying Newsweek and adding yet another huge responsibility to his already too-full plate made me nervous. ), it is preposterous to say that the rules of the game are the same. On Aug. 3, 1963, former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham, having struggled with severe bouts of depression for at least five years, went into the bathroom of his family farm near Marshall, Va., and committed suicide with a 28-gauge shotgun. Im here If you need me and I love you. Facebook gives people the power to. Surrounded by her male editors and executives, Graham could recognize in herself the same reflexes of deference she had learned as a daughter and as a wife. I think this definition of roles deepened as time went on and I became increasingly unsure of myself. I did not go to help you. During that Leningrad trip, the only moment that hinted at something mysterious and human came when we were in a map room at the Hermitage Museum. The interview had been heady stuff. Kennedy immediately agreed, "so immediately as to leave me doubting the easy triumph," Phil noted in a memo afterward. The Formative Years. You cant go. Yet, the publisher must realize that he has obligations which transcend any commercial interest.". But there are also relationships that start out that way yet cross over to become real friendships that last forever. The deal took only about three weeks from beginning to end, during which time he slept very little and rode a high crest, working feverishly to get it done. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Soon Phil began telling his friends that he was going to divorce his wife and marry Robin Webb. At one point, Mrs. Graham asked for ice cream. I have now gone. Until now, Katharine Graham, considering her influence, has been almost invisible. He wept and wept and couldn't stop. Still, I believed that with enough rest he'd recover and we'd go on. I grew up considerably, mostly thanks to him. I would not insist that Moscow was short on luxury in those days except to note that I did not so much find a hairdresser as create one. I didn't hear the term "manic-depression" until some years later. ~ Gambling. By early March 1961, Phil was involved in his old in-depth way with many activities -- political and Post Co.-related -- and he seemed to me to be enjoying himself. After much talk, consultation, and soul-searching, Phil finally decided to accept. The Post pursued Watergate as a news story, not as an ideological crusade. Openings Loose Lips Five months later, Phil Graham, once again in a trough of depression, ended the affair and came home.}. He replied, Oh, yes, very. Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to bar nine Negro students from the previously all-white Central High School in Little Rock. Phil wrote him on March 17, 1940, in his nervousness misspelling my name: "I am going to get married. See Photos Inside His Beverly Hills Home. . From the start, Katharine was dazzled by her husbands intelligence and wit, his ability to light up a room: He began to liberate me from my family and from the myths they had propagated. But she was resentful as well. Sometime after the "brainwashing" party, Johnson urged Phil to be at his side during the final push for passage of the bill. I went because it was my Destiny. He kept questioning whether this was the reason for his success and his prominence. Mixing Politics. Phil wrote a letter in return that Katharine rightly describes as pretty strange: One morning when you were despairing I tried to help you by words. Phil, who had been helping him prepare for this moment for months, was at his side working on his statement. Phil also brought into my life more laughter, gaiety, irreverence for rules, and originality. District Line Daily: Our news, politics, arts, food, and sports coverage in one email every weekday. This is, for me, the most painful thing to look back on. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The moment of happiness you gave me is more help than most people are given in a lifetime, Thank you for it. Without Graham working as a go-between at the 1960 Democratic Convention, Kennedy might never have picked Johnson as his running mate. Much of his activity was related to politics. I remember his commenting on how well Phil wrote and how much he'd like to have him work for The Washington Post. Toward the end of her life, I was a success in her eyes, and perhaps that is what she loved. He had the ideas, the jokes, the games. Someone -- I've never been sure who -- reached President Kennedy, who agreed to the use of a government plane to transport the doctors to get Phil. But what of it? 1952) Mistress: Robin Webb (Newsweek journalist, 1962) High School: Miami High School, Miami, FL Grahams father had had trouble coming up with the funds to send him to Harvard Law, but managed to do so. Bradlee was incensed, and said so in terms both loud and profane. All rights reserved. If you think that it's important to have high quality local reporting we hope you'll support our work with a monthly contribution. I found it impossibly difficult to learn and never really did, although my children tried having me learn by stamping out cigarettes and drying myself with bath towels. See Photos. Katharine's husband Philip battled alcoholism and mental illness throughout the marriage. Phil called me once or twice, and carried on in his usual irreverent, breezy way. @robin.webb.100. Except for the $500 present, I never used a cent of my own until two years later, when Phil went into the Army. In 1934, when Phil was 19, his mother died of cancer -- he later confessed that he had cried himself to sleep night after night in college. Unlike Phil, I find it hard to express emotion. Health problems and death The Post publisher took a mistress, Robin Webb, whom he set up in a large house in Washington and a farm outside of the city. Phil drove me home, and we talked for a long time. Later, she developed an infatuation with the work of Thomas Mann and seems to have made endless demands on the authors time and patience. He also began making public scenesonce launching into an obscene tirade during a speech, and, on another occasion, punching out a detective at an airport. Certainly he saw his whole endeavor as useless unless he could project a future for The Post in the family. To the surprise of some, she easily warded off the blandishments of Samuel I. Newhouse (once with a somewhat duplicitous Theodore Sorensen as her agent) and the Times-Mirror Company. But then Mrs. Graham was laughing. CAPTION: The Grahams with their children at Glen Welby in 1956; Lally, left, Katherine, Phil (holding Steve), Bill and Don. So did Meg Greenfield. After lunch, we went upstairs to our bedroom for a nap. After a short while, Phil got up, saying he wanted to lie down in a separate bedroom he sometimes used. This is a very significant case and has huge repercussions for freedom of expression & religious liberty in our country. I also think that he realized the illness would recur. Pei was talking, and Katharine said, I didnt know that., Whats surprising about that? Agnes said. My father received a confidential letter from his friend Kent Cooper, former general manager of the Associated Press, who was living in retirement in Palm Beach. Although at the time I didnt realize what was happening, I was unable to make a decision that might displease those around me. But hurry, she said. My father had indeed given Phil the major part of the stock, and Phil had run the company well, but it was the millions invested in the paper by my father that enabled it to survive the years of losses. Sometimes you become friends with people with whom you work because of some common interest or just because you have to work together. Some of my deepest friendships began with an administration person whom I got to know because of my association with the paper.. I did not go because I did not want to help you. journalism. But I want you to know I am among the many people in this country who believe in you and are behind you with trust and devotion.. So does her imperious carriage. Another habit of his that emerged during those years was that, when we were with friends and I was talking, he would look at me in such a way that I felt I was going on too long and boring people. Unfortunately, this incapacity often produced in womenas it did in mea diffuse way of talking, an inability to be concise, a tendency to ramble, to start at the end and work backwards, to overexplain, to go on for too long, to apologize. Phil stunned Katharine by proposing marriage to her almost instantly, and he followed up the proposal with an insistence that they set out for Florida and a life without family money. At one point, President Kennedy dispatched a Presidential plane to get him from Phoenix to Washington. Eugene served Agnes breakfast in bed every morning; he ate at the bedside table. Simple Pleasures. Coronavirus, Carry-out Critic There, in a ballroom full of the nation's top publishers, Phil Graham lost it. Then He Tested Positive for COVID. He would help me proofread. To get a sense of how momentous were Katharine Grahams two decisions in the nineteen-seventieson the Pentagon Papers and Watergateit is crucial to understand just how poorly she had been prepared for such decisions by her family, her legendary husband, and the atmosphere in which she had always lived. Early in 1940, I was invited by a friend to Sunday lunch with a group at the Ritz Carlton. Phil Graham maintained Meyer's intimacy with power. Phil then cut a deal. He began actively recruiting young people with potential, as well as more established reporters and editors. Curiously I was in complete accord with this idea. To keep a story out of the paper to achieve a purpose, even a fine one, is neither appropriate nor in the spirit of my father's definition of the duty of a newspaper: "To try to tell the truth. President Kennedy dispatched a Presidential plane to get him from Phoenix to Washington the bottom moment months. 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