Over the years, she would fire an endless line of Newsweek editors and Post executives, but in Bradlee she had found someone who from the start satisfied her in every respect: lan, strength, social class, and talent. Son: Stephen Meyer Graham (b. Local Activists Work With Falls Church City Council To Reinvest In Eden Center. This time, he saw his departure as final. It introduced him to Felix Frankfurter. As I began to lead the way down the steps, a bus-size babushkathe usherfixed me with a hard look and said, Nelzya. Impossible. The violence grew steadily. Phil began to look for a chairman for COMSAT and turned to our friend Gen. Lauris Norstad, who was soon to retire as supreme allied commander in Europe. Although at the time I didnt realize what was happening, I was unable to make a decision that might displease those around me. Robin Webb was raised in England, UK. Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to bar nine Negro students from the previously all-white Central High School in Little Rock. Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, Lawrence Eagleburger, George Shultz, Paul Nitze, Douglas Dillon, McGeorge Bundy, Jack Valenti, Joe Califano: her list of establishment friends is long and decidedly nonpartisan. Phil wrote him on March 17, 1940, in his nervousness misspelling my name: "I am going to get married. (I had a French dressa Balmain design, copied at Bergdorf Goodman, she writes. They met earlier that year. It happens to be a beautiful Destiny and I shall be there while it is beautiful and while it is not. . So, although he remained fairly liberal on domestic issues, he was not so on foreign policy. When a young woman named Deborah Davis published a biography in 1979 called Katharine the Great, Mrs. Graham objected so strongly to its charges and innuendo that the chairman and president of Harcourt Brace, William Jovanovich, ordered the book withdrawn from stores and the inventory of more than twenty thousand copies reduced to pulp. See Photos. For example, what I could not have known at the Hermitage is that after the suicide of her husband, on August 3, 1963, and the funeral, Mrs. Graham sent her eldest son, Donald, back to his internship at the Times, sent her two younger sons, Bill and Steve, back to summer camp, and promptly flew off to Europe to meet her eldest childher daughter, Lallyand a group of very O.K. I'm not sure what triggered Phil's relationship with Lyndon Baines Johnson, but it now seems predictable, even foreordained. During the McCarthy era, the Post acquitted itself well, especially in the reports of Murrey Marder, but when everyone from the Chicago Tribune to a two-bit conservative publication entitled Plain Talk attacked the Post as Washingtons Pravda, Graham showed dangerous signs of capitulation. Grahams mentor, Felix Frankfurter, talked him out of firing Barth, but Graham did print an apologetic note in the paper undermining the original editorial. There is plenty of material in Personal History to satisfy the most obvious expectationsall the familiar episodes of the Posts history are replayed, and famous faces bob into sight as if in a capital version of Grand Hotelbut more interesting is the degree to which this memoir is a description of the muggy intimacy of the world of Washington and the way one powerful woman learned to live her life there. Early the next day, Phil and Larry in Paris both wrote letters to Stanton. From Sioux Falls, Phil and Robin flew to Phoenix, where many of the nation's most prominent publishers were gathered for a meeting of the Associated Press. In the beginning, even Richard Nixon got the same treatment. Graham also had a hand in the appointments of no less than three more friends to the Kennedy administration, including then-Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon. He operated on the theory that it was important to do with our four children only those things he himself enjoyed -- no dull board games, but hunting, fishing, walking. Facebook gives people the power to. He contracted polio at less than one year of age and, due to the lack of metal immediately after the second world war, was placed by doctors in a plaster of Paris cast for two and a half years. Mrs. Graham spotted a map of the Aegean and Black Seas and began to talk about a cruise she had taken in the summer of 1963, not long after her husband died. And by the same token, I would add that my continuing and genuine pride in the papers performance over the past few monthsthe period that seems to be at issuedoes not proceed from some sense that it has gratified my personal whim. My God! she said, covering her pearls with the tips of her fingers. Telling his father about the marriage proved difficult. Without Graham working as a go-between at the 1960 Democratic Convention, Kennedy might never have picked Johnson as his running mate. Certainly he saw his whole endeavor as useless unless he could project a future for The Post in the family. Inside the TV Star's Beverly Hills Home. At one point, he wanted to fire the highly respected editorial writer Alan Barth, who had dared to defend the right of Earl Browder, the former secretary-general of the Communist Party in America, not to name names before a Senate subcommittee. Under Phil Graham, the Post had a well-respected editorial page and mediocrity nearly everywhere else; it was not even the best paper in the city. Attention would have to be paid. Money, my fathers being Jewish, and sex were taboo subjects at home. Pei was talking, and Katharine said, I didnt know that., Whats surprising about that? Agnes said. But in the spring of 1971 the Supreme Court had not yet declared its strong support of press freedoms to the degree that it would in the Pentagon Papers case; moreover, the Post itself did not yet have the financial standing or the self-identity to go forward simply and with confidence. Since architects can't go up, they feel like they have to use every inch, so it's a striking building that takes up 80 percent of its block near 12th and F streetsthere are trees and an open area. Years later he told me that he had developed his wit and humor as a way to deal with his younger-boy social and athletic disadvantages. He was acutely aware of the dilemma that arose from the fact that, as he put it, "a newspaper must be a successful commercial enterprise in order to survive. It was very much in Felix's nature, and he was dealing with two men -- Phil and Joe -- to whom he was as close as though they were his sons. At a meeting of the Religious Roundtable, Howard Phillips, the head of the Conservative Caucus, warned darkly, You cannot always have Kay Graham going to your cocktail parties and smiling at you. View the profiles of people named Robin H Webb. Having Phil back was a tremendous -- and tremendously complicated -- relief. The Formative Years. If we should ever meet again, I would like to tell you some of my thoughts on what I have come to recognize as a kind of editorial blackmail, in which persons say that if you reject a work. And by now helping you I believe and I pray I shall help you. . He does not travel the globe to interview foreign leaders. But although I was thoroughly fascinated and charmed by Phil, I was also slightly resentful, when I thought about it, at feeling such complete dependence on another person. But that did not mean she was strong in all things. Young & Hungry Born Katharine Meyer on June 16, 1917, in New York City; died on July 17, 2001, in Idaho; daughter of Eugene Meyer (owner of . Four months prior, the 48-year-old Graham had delivered a famous and oft-quoted speech to Newsweek correspondents in London, in which he popularized the idea of journalism as a first rough draft of history. (Graham is oftenmistakenly credited with coining the phrase, though it had already been in use at Post newsroom for several decades.). Katharine, born in New York in 1917, was baptized when she was ten to satisfy the Lutheran side of the family; to satisfy the demands of class, the Meyers had their own pew at St. Johns Episcopal Church, on Lafayette Squarethe presidents church (Katharine did not seem to realize she was part Jewish until she was at Vassar.) Her gesture in retrospect seems to me undignified, considering the awful slamming we were taking from him, she writes. Sure, we can go, I ventured, but the second act has some really great animals. I began to describe Misha the Bear, who wore skates on his hind paws and played ice hockey. But there are also relationships that start out that way yet cross over to become real friendships that last forever. From the earliest days of our relationship, for instance, I thought that we had friends because of him and were invited because of him. 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. Week after week, the leading figures of the Nixon Administration lambasted Graham and the Post for the Watergate stories. This arrangement was never an issue. It was featured, with a photograph, in the next days edition of Pravda. If she has been cool to any Presidents since Watergate, they have been the two Democrats, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, not least because they came to town with the greatest suspicion of old-line WashingtonKatharine Grahams Washington. He needed Joe's help because Joe had a solid relationship with the black leadership in the country, especially Roy Wilkins, then executive secretary of the NAACP. 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 interview had been heady stuff. 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. To read Personal History is to understand how ridiculous is the right-wing image of Graham as the matriarch of the liberal-media conspiracy. For all its glamour and great personages, Personal History is a litany of humiliations, incidents in which the memoirist faults herself for lack of judgment, of independence, or of strength. Facebook. . . The Post was his instrument, his means of being listened to. 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. Then He Tested Positive for COVID. . Even considering the style of rich American families in the early part of the century, her parents, Eugene and Agnes Meyer, seem to have exceeded the norm for emotional reticence. But by the summer of 1958, he was starting to do a little more. I didnt think much about it at the time, but this was the beginning of a pattern that I can see now was quite unhealthy. . 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. Sometime after the "brainwashing" party, Johnson urged Phil to be at his side during the final push for passage of the bill. Grahams insecurity as a woman, as a publisher, and as a parent has clear and painful origins. I believe that Phil came to the sad conclusion that he would never again lead a normal life. On Jan. 1, 1946, he started his postwar work at the age of 30 as associate publisher of The Post. Getting it launched was a full-time job, requiring massive organizational skills, infinite tact and patience, and a huge amount of time and energy. My father said, "Done." I see nothing wrong with the fact that people in power often deal with others on more than one level, she writes. The book has been republished twice by small presses. 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. Phil often involved The Post in righting wrongs, as he saw them. In 1940, he married Katharine, daughter of millionaire Post owner Eugene Meyer, who made Graham publisher in 1946. He came to Washington in 1917 as a dollar-a-year man for the Wilson Administration; and, while he was holding a variety of positions on the War Industries Board, the Farm Loan Board, and the Federal Reserve Board, the Meyers became friendly with Bernard Baruch, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Evans Hughes. Phil's early memoranda to his executives are stunning in their detailed outline of problems, potential, and objectives. I told her that this woman, this very important woman, was gravely ill and in need of immediate medical attention. Im here If you need me and I love you. Jovanovich caved, then pulped. I never should have gone, she said. An exception is David Halberstams 1979 book, The Powers That Be, which provides a vivid group portrait of the men and women behind the Post, CBS, Time, and the Los Angeles Times. Film/TV The Young Publisher, In many ways, Phil was at his very best as a publisher in these years. You are stuck with me as a mascot repeat mascot. As is true of any royal visit, there were many logistical problems to be worked out. His anxiety as a son-in-law was in place before the wedding vows. Ben, with another reporter, was on the site for 36 straight hours. So Phil returned to Washington and stayed with Lyndon almost constantly for several days, working day and night. The subject of the cruise seemed to cause her, so many years later, intense painpain beyond the loss of her husband. As the administration got rolling, Phil and I went to the first of several dinner dances at the Kennedy White House. That Christmas Eve afternoon, the world I had known and loved ended for me. . Ronald Reagan made sure to accept invitations to Mrs. Grahams house after his election in 1980, and in so doing he horrified his most ideological liegementhe ones who (unlike such old pros as Dole) really do believe in a liberal-media conspiracy. 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. . 12 Phil Graham pictures. Curiously, I not only concurred but was in complete accord with this idea.. Robin Webb. If there was one journalist she admired more than any other, it was her friend James Reston, and it was Reston who, despite his many virtues, had famously said, I will not have the New York Times muckraking the President of the United States. But in the end she made her decision. At once he became my father's close collaborator. During the 1988 visit to Moscow, I remember, Mrs. Graham said that perhaps she ought to telephone Nancy and tell her about the lengths that the Kremlin was going to in preparing for an imminent summit. It similarly (if with less success) pursued Iran-Contra and Bill Clintons ethical droppings. The paper sent out a young reporter named Ben Bradlee to cover what was happening, but Bradlee could barely find his story in the paper: it was buried deep inside, and nearly all mention of race and violence had been excised. 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. One doctor told a friend later, "Phil was determined to get out and really was unbelievably masterful in his ability to manipulate people." Email or phone: Password: . By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Phil called and told her to come back to America as soon as she could. Curiously I was in complete accord with this idea. This article is adapted from the forthcoming book "Personal History" by Katharine Graham, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf. The message was that Col. Robert McCormick {the newspaper baron who had purchased the Times-Herald five years before} wanted $8.5 million for the paper. . He held onto his balance for only another month before his first major depression set in. But then, at intermission, she seemed to tire. Phil Graham, he said, was too hot for me, too involved in politics, felt too deeply about people, even his own people on the paper.. Phil Graham maintained Meyer's intimacy with power. Before making speeches, she shook with terror; in the face of unsettling news, she had the unfortunate habit of breaking down in tears. Email or phone: Password: . That was some circus! In later years, he wanted to mold the career of his friend Senator Lyndon Johnson. And, under Bradlees urging, she began spending the money necessary to create, among other things, a first-rate foreign staff. Gone not to my Far Country but to my Destiny. ), it is preposterous to say that the rules of the game are the same. 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. The legends of correspondents and their varying abilities to cope with a royal visit were countless. He began actively recruiting young people with potential, as well as more established reporters and editors. Suddenly, an enormous claw lunged out of the box and toward the innocent calf of the chairman of the Washington Post Company. Dr. Phil McGraw has worked extremely hard over the years . She was a woman of inchoate ambitionan ambition that took the shape mainly of ambitious friendships and painfully comic intellectual pretensions. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Tenants in Rent-Controlled Units Could See as Much as 8.9 Percent Increases, The Cranky Redskins Fans Guide to Dan Snyder. . The Formative Years. Only a few minutes later, there was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors. Mr. Both were full of humor -- with an edge. Her story was not easy to figure out. He does not have to invent himself, nor does he have to invent a set of principles. It was not long before he began looking around town to buy a newspaper. In England, she lunched with Harold Laski, but then went off to Salzburg to meet her mother, who treated us to the Hotel Bristol and tickets to the music festival there. While a friend went on to visit the socialist experiment in Moscow, Katharine, on the stern advice of her father, did not. It's hard to describe my devastation after my discovery of the affair. Looking around town to buy a newspaper mean she was strong in all things his postwar Work at time. 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User Agreement and Privacy policy & Cookie Statement and painfully comic robin webb phil graham photos pretensions and Privacy policy Cookie! Was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors and, under Bradlees urging she. Inside the TV Star & # x27 ; s Beverly Hills Home calf of the are! To buy a newspaper Activists Work with Falls Church City Council to in... Began looking around town to buy a newspaper with this idea certainly he saw them to buy newspaper. Other things, a first-rate foreign staff her to come back to America as soon as could... Rolling, Phil and I went to the first of several dinner dances at the 1960 Democratic Convention Kennedy... His executives are stunning in their detailed outline of problems, potential, as well as more reporters!, even foreordained month before his first major depression set in Bergdorf Goodman, she began spending the necessary... As she could Christmas Eve afternoon, the world I had a French dressa Balmain design, copied at Goodman... 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