Page Three The second week in February, he called me at work late one afternoon suggesting that we have dinner at Harvey's, a famous old seafood restaurant next door to the Mayflower, where we could buy the early edition of The Post. Bradlee had been Phils friend, not hers, but he pushed for the job of managing editor, pushed with his customary blend of charm and vulgarity (Id give my left one for the job, he told her at lunch one day), and she melted. 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. Needless to say, for years I regaled all who would listen with my Katharine Graham story. 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. The two most powerful presences in her lifeher mother and her husbandwere both clearly suffering from psychological problems, yet Katharine still felt inferior to them. By June 17th, thanks to his national editor, Ben Bagdikian, he had his own set of papers. But even this was hard to understand. I had to face facts -- Phil was really gone. Im here If you need me and I love you. He even got the patients to take a vote among themselves. Money, my fathers being Jewish, and sex were taboo subjects at home. After the honeymoon, we settled into our little house, which we rented for $80 a month in a pleasant neighborhood called Burleith. 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. In 1965, Graham helped herself and the paper immeasurably by hiring Ben Bradlee, Newsweeks charismatic bureau chief in Washington and a friend of the Kennedys. "Y'all are doingreallocal D.C. In early 1963, Phil's condition became public. (The Meyers had five children, of whom Katharine was the fourth.) . Robin Lee Graham is seen on his boat "Dove" during his solo trip around the world in the late 1960s. The evening was fine and fun. Local Dining Guide, City Lights But that is the way Phil Graham wanted it. Naturally, they voted that he be allowed to go. Mrs. Grahamone always referred to her as Mrs. Graham, even in private and at great distancesdid not travel in the style of the British Raj, but she was not arriving on a Eurailpass, either. For whatever reason, I liked to be dominated and to be the implementer. Whoops! In the early days of Watergate, she tried, in rather submissive terms, to build a personal bridge to the one man who exceeded even Nixon in his public hatred of the PostSpiro Agnew. In meeting after meeting, in Washington and New York, she was the only woman in the room, and not a self-confident one at that. At that point, Phil got together with {columnist} Joe Alsop to discuss the merits of Lyndon Johnson as Kennedy's running mate. Around the table in Phil's office sat Secretary of the Interior Julius "Cap" Krug, Undersecretary Oscar Chapman, President Truman's special adviser Clark Clifford, and two or three others. . Soccer I was earning about $1,500 a year. My feeling that something fundamental had been destroyed was a result of my total commitment and my belief that these feelings went both ways. Facebook. 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. But hurry, she said. 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. It all seems so odd in retrospect. This arrangement was never an issue. By mid-1948, The Post was still a rocky, if lively, paper. On the appointed day, I put on my good blue suit, fired up the office Volvo, and proudly drove the hairdresser to Mrs. Grahams suite at the National Hotel. There was the Latin-American correspondent for the Post, who wandered the continent for weeks in advance, arranging hotel suites, hairdressers, and interviews with heads of state from Caracas to Tierra del Fuego. Jovanovich caved, then pulped. I cannot tell you how pained I am by the circumstances which have caused you, quite unnecessarily, distress and concern, Jovanovich wrote in a cowering letter to Mrs. Graham. On Oct. 28, in the middle of the night, he broke. . At one meeting with L.B.J. Circumstances seemed to conspire in challenging Graham. View the profiles of people named Robin H Webb. Phil asked Joe to bring Felix Frankfurter along. My feelings about The Post, however, were very clear. Seelye. ", "Washington City Paper has made me feel like I am part of the D.C. 2023 Cond Nast. Updated: August 28, 2015 Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Up to that time I had been a fairly present mother, attending school functions, driving teams to sports events, trying to be back in the afternoons when the kids got back from school. Graham instructed Bradlee to recount what he had seen and heard, and after he had done so the publisher and the three officials worked out a deal: as long as all the city pools were shut down for the time being and would be integrated the following year, the paper would print nothing more of what had happened. He committed suicide that day. you are repressing free expression and limiting the truth.. CAPTION: Phil Graham, as publisher of The Washington Post, often involved the paper in righting wrongs, as he saw them. Katharine Graham revealed in her 1997 autobiography Personal History (which her biographer Deborah Davis reviewed for Washington City Paper) that she felt her husband received inadequate treatment at Chestnut Lodge, going so far as to say that his condition required electroshock therapy. If you have the goods, you say, Screw it, and publish. I have now gone. 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. Join Facebook to connect with Robin Graham and others you may know. So Phil returned to Washington and stayed with Lyndon almost constantly for several days, working day and night. . Phil, Kennedy said, when you get elected dogcatcher I will listen to you on politics. But in fact Kennedy had listened to him. It introduced him to Felix Frankfurter. Phil wasn't much better than I, but went at it with much more enthusiasm and natural energy -- so much so that at one of the parties his pants split horizontally across the rear. Perhaps if the turmoil had ended there he might have been able to rest and get his strength back. Katharine Graham is now seventy-nine, and the Post is in the hands of her son Donald, who is fifty-one. 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. He was in charge of a losing newspaper in what was rapidly becoming the capital of the world. There was, of course, no way to press the point. Ben, with another reporter, was on the site for 36 straight hours. Phil was clearly upset, too. Instead, it appeared on Page B7. Books This was not entirely to the good. From the start, she was intent on keeping the paper within the family and eventually passing it on to her children. She did not have to. For all his seeming irreverence and liberality, Phil Graham was no less domineering than any other husband of his day: Always, it was he who decided and I who responded. ~ Gambling. Felix adopted Phil as one of his "boys" before he was appointed by President Roosevelt to the Supreme Court. Under Ochs, the Times institutionalized the notion of nonpartisan, objective reporting. I was expected to perform all the pulling and hauling; Phil gave directions and put the fun in my life and the childrens. As enormous cages and nets were being assembled in the circus ring, she declared, I think its time to go.. between the constitutionally protected expression of dissent. Mrs. Graham seemed not to mind the nasty benches or the almost very funny clowns. City Desk On Feb. 1, Phil came home briefly. Phil was earning $3,600 a year as a law clerk. Despite Phil s constant self-flagellation about being the son-in-law of a rich and powerful clan, he did not shy from the advantages for long. Believing that he knew enough of the key players that he could solve the problem with behind-the-scenes maneuvering, he kept several phones going day and night. The legends of correspondents and their varying abilities to cope with a royal visit were countless. You are stuck with me as a mascot repeat mascot. I went because it was my Destiny. It proceeds from my belief that the editors and reporters have fulfilled the highest standards of professional duty and responsibility.. Phil viewed this whole sequence of events, with some reason, as a violation of his rights and civil liberties. Everything except Phil's personal expenses was carried by me from the modest trust started for each of the Meyer children by my father. He left no note of any kind. In fact, Graham played a significant role in convincing JFK to appoint Johnson to the vice presidency instead of Missouri Senator Stuart Symington. He was really a. . Gradually, I became the drudge and, whats more, accepted my role as a kind of second-class citizen. In 1966, Truman Capote, her neighbor at the U.N. Plaza, where she kept a New York apartment, threw his famous Black-and-White costume ball for her. There he was diagnosed with manic depression, a condition today known as bipolar disorder. Which is precisely the wrong way to conduct business as the publisher of a newspaper. The editors around her grumbled almost inaudibly, but just enough, it seemed to me, to nudge her out of such a call. At dinner that night, Phil stood up and went straight to the lectern, where he began to speak. He said he felt trapped, no longer able to go on; that everything was black. Robin . Graham, Katharine (1917-2001) American newspaper publisher who guided the Washington Post through its most turbulent period when it published the "Pentagon Papers" and investigated the Watergate affair. For years, Katharine witnessed her husbands violent mood swingshis periods of heavy drinking, his bizarre behavior, his prolonged depressions. Toward the end of her life, I was a success in her eyes, and perhaps that is what she loved. At Vassar and at the University of Chicago, Katherine took an interest in left-wing politics, which were very much in the air, but always her sense and her sense of breeding prevented her from taking what seemed like extreme steps. . He was the publisher (from 1946 until his death) and co-owner (from 1948) of The Washington Post. 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. The moment of happiness you gave me is more help than most people are given in a lifetime, Thank you for it. Almost pathetically, he asked not to go back to Chestnut Lodge. Dr. Phil McGraw has worked extremely hard over the years . 243 replies 897 retweets 2,932 likes Robin Webb Retweeted ), Graham had undeniably, historically, made the right decision, and in the years to come she supported the investigative efforts of the Post; but the signs of her ambivalence about her social and political role never ceased. If one compares the approach of the liberal media (the Post, the Times, etc.) So did Meg Greenfield. Join Facebook to connect with Robin H Webb and others you may know. 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). We grew less able to keep up with what was happening in the world. But, always, it was he who decided and I who responded. Phil Graham was forty-eight when he died. A South Dakota native, Philip Graham graduated from Harvard Law School and worked as a clerk to two Supreme Court justices. 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.. The appearance of this messenger, a Newsweek stringer whose name was Robin Webb, was the beginning of the tragic end. As a result, I had no one on whom to lean for advice. I also said that I admired the legislation he himself had got passed and was for him and wanted to make sure he knew it.. There, in a ballroom full of the nation's top publishers, Phil Graham lost it. In speeches, Dole had accused her paper of waging an ideological vendetta against the President. 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. Though Phil knew nothing about the newspaper business -- or any business, for that matter -- his brains and abilities served him well. But there are also relationships that start out that way yet cross over to become real friendships that last forever. And yet his periods of lucidity and humor, of lively intelligence, were frequent enough to confuse her and delay any sense of reckoning. He never really meant it when he spent weeks vilifying the Times for bias, he told Katharine Q. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. 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. Performance/Dance 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. I had begun writing so-called light editorials and laying out parts of the editorial page. He wept and wept and couldn't stop. His most passionate political interests are local. It happens to be a beautiful Destiny and I shall be there while it is beautiful and while it is not. Phil was bright, issue-oriented, hard-working, witty, and, to me, amazingly good-looking. In later years, he wanted to mold the career of his friend Senator Lyndon Johnson. Dr. Phil and Wife Robin Live in a Sprawling Mansion! It was my paying all our living expenses that had allowed Phil to purchase his stock with his income from The Post. Early the next day, Phil and Larry in Paris both wrote letters to Stanton. Phil called and told her to come back to America as soon as she could. All that has changed now, with the publication of Katharine Grahams own Personal History (Knopf; $30). She once took the time to introduce her friend the architect I. M. Pei to Agnes. . By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. On Saturday, Aug. 3, Phil's driver picked him up at Chestnut Lodge, and then they came to R Street to get me. All right, she told Bradlee on the telephone, in the midst of a reception at her house, with the Posts lawyer counselling caution in her free ear. I see nothing wrong with the fact that people in power often deal with others on more than one level, she writes. My limousine driver had been given strict instructionsand a sizable bribeto wait outside in case of emergency. So, although he remained fairly liberal on domestic issues, he was not so on foreign policy. . Until now, Katharine Graham, considering her influence, has been almost invisible. This article is adapted from the forthcoming book "Personal History" by Katharine Graham, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf. Weymouth's brother, Stephen Graham,. Son: Stephen Meyer Graham (b. Why are Vladimir Putins opponents dying? To win the paper, Phil employed the most feared lawyer in Washington, Edward Bennett Williams. In a group we remained largely silent, unable to participate in conversations and discussions. 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. The whole political year of 1960 was very exciting. 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. At one point, President Kennedy dispatched a Presidential plane to get him from Phoenix to Washington. Phil also brought into my life more laughter, gaiety, irreverence for rules, and originality. Grahams insecurity as a woman, as a publisher, and as a parent has clear and painful origins. . Phil often involved The Post in righting wrongs, as he saw them. Liz at Large 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. 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. 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