She had not yet developed the steely mask that would later trouble the sleep of her adjutants. Under Ochs, the Times institutionalized the notion of nonpartisan, objective reporting. . Housing Complex 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. After the war, Phil Graham was even more national security conscious than before. Phil and I flew to California five days before the Democratic Convention was to open. Yet, the publisher must realize that he has obligations which transcend any commercial interest.". 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. As a publisher, Don Graham may never face a pair of crises as critical as the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. But there was also a certain Africa-based correspondent who carved his own career coffin by arranging for a balloon safari over the Masai Mara at dawn; just as the sun was glinting off the savanna and the balloon was rising above a herd of grazing giraffes, Mrs. Graham is said to have turned to the correspondent and announced, with a profane burr, You know, I didnt travel all the way here to be a fucking tourist. It is said that the correspondent ended up as a recipe checker in the food section. 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. Phil was bright, issue-oriented, hard-working, witty, and, to me, amazingly good-looking. . 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). On Oct. 28, in the middle of the night, he broke. In doing so, she and her editor, Ben Bradlee, dragged the Post out of the sea of the ordinary and made it great, made it a rival of the New York Times. (One area that, surprisingly, started to shift under my feet was the Posts editorial quality. She once took the time to introduce her friend the architect I. M. Pei to Agnes. He welcomed her with a carload of flowers, and together they flew to Sioux Falls, S.D., where he was to talk to the publisher of the local paper about buying it. Naturally, they voted that he be allowed to go. 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. I simply didnt connect my lack of self-confidence with his behavior to me., The end of this increasingly painful marriage was prolonged and extremely public. So, on June 18, 1946, The Post announced that my father was withdrawing from active direction of the paper. Not only did Phil own the majority of the stock but he also believed that his efforts as publisher entitled him to ownership. Pretty soon this kind of thinkingindeed, this kind of lifetook its toll: most of us became somehow inferior. . 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. She pursued hard the company of the well known. Phil Graham's descent into the abyss of manic depression accelerated, and on 24 December 1962 she discovered that he was embroiled in an affair with a Newsweek stringer, Robin Webb. There is still a vital distinction. I see nothing wrong with the fact that people in power often deal with others on more than one level, she writes. Katharine Grahams establishment position on the war did not go unnoticed. Everything rotated around him, and I willingly participated in keeping him at the center of things. (I had a French dressa Balmain design, copied at Bergdorf Goodman, she writes. Still, I believed that with enough rest he'd recover and we'd go on. So does her imperious carriage. But he always insisted that we lead our own lives. It was a fleeting, mystifying moment, but a very real one. Only a few minutes later, there was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors. 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. Dr. Phil McGraw has worked extremely hard over the years . Agnes was perennially engaged in writing books-in-progress. The General Secretary had revealed his plans for a joint United StatesSoviet space mission to Mars, and we led the paper with that world beat. You are stuck with me as a mascot repeat mascot. 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. The Young Publisher, In many ways, Phil was at his very best as a publisher in these years. Baseball His remarks quickly degenerated, turning into nonsense interspersed with ugly language. Her name is Katherine Meyer and I've not a doubt in the world that you'll love her. Mainly, the Grahams were poor and had a difficult struggle. It all seems so odd in retrospect. Her obeisance was institutional and political, not merely personal. 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. He was a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Stanley Reed while waiting to clerk the following year for Felix Frankfurter, his mentor from Harvard Law School. Phil knew he controlled The Post because my father had given him the majority of A shares. In later years, he wanted to mold the career of his friend Senator Lyndon Johnson. Ben, with another reporter, was on the site for 36 straight hours. 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. 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. There, in a ballroom full of the nation's top publishers, Phil Graham lost it. Books Born Katharine Meyer on June 16, 1917, in New York City; died on July 17, 2001, in Idaho; daughter of Eugene Meyer (owner of . Yet, with all her complexity, I felt closer throughout my early childhood to my mother than to the very distant and rather difficult figure of my father. It was a loyal nanny, Powelly, who supplied the hugs, the comforting, the feeling of human contact, even the love that my mother did not.. 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. Local Dining Guide, City Lights So Phil returned to Washington and stayed with Lyndon almost constantly for several days, working day and night. He does not live in Georgetown. It is not usually advisable, or possible, to argue with a Soviet bus, but my priorities were clear. After lunch, we went upstairs to our bedroom for a nap. . By contrast, the Wall Street Journals editorial page ignored Watergate and Iran-Contra as ideologically inconvenient and has pursued Whitewater with the foam visible on its lips. Here was someone who combined for me the two parts of my life that I thought were inescapably separate. I also think that he realized the illness would recur. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. . By mid-1948, The Post was still a rocky, if lively, paper. Sometimes you become friends with people with whom you work because of some common interest or just because you have to work together. Into this vacuum, Phil moved swiftly and with great assurance. Apparently, the interview went well. He stepped up his connection to Lyndon Johnson. In the late nineteen-fifties, Phil Grahams health and behavior also presented increasingly difficult problemsproblems that might have been solved with medication, if he had not refused it. The whole idea of buying Newsweek and adding yet another huge responsibility to his already too-full plate made me nervous. He was intent, however, on making his mark in public life as well as on the stock exchange. We had lunch on two trays on the back porch at Glen Welby, chatting and listening to some classical records. One doctor told a friend later, "Phil was determined to get out and really was unbelievably masterful in his ability to manipulate people." We in Moscow had neither the time nor the luxury that would allow us to confirm these legends. One did not want to spend the remainder of ones career taste-testing lima beans. 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. There were moments of strain between us, mostly when he drank too much, after which -- almost inevitably -- a rather violent quarrel would ensue, followed by abject apologies and diminished drinking, or even a temporary period of no drinking at all. Katharine, by her own account and in the accounts of others, was a tall and awkward girl with a manly stride, but she was also intelligent, and she absorbed the lessons of her social class well. I would be lucky to cover high-school softball in Prince William County. Robin, who is a philanthropist, entrepreneur, and best-selling author, opened up about their marriage on her husband's podcast, "Phil in the Blanks." "We don't have the perfect marriage," she admitted. Robin Webb. He was in charge of a losing newspaper in what was rapidly becoming the capital of the world. 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. He was raised in Miami where his father, Ernest R. ("Cap") Graham, made a career in farming and real estate, and was elected to the State Senate. As I began to lead the way down the steps, a bus-size babushkathe usherfixed me with a hard look and said, Nelzya. Impossible. According to Otis, who told me all of this only much later, Phil was disheveled and spinning out ideas, some of which were unintelligible. It never crossed my mind that he might have viewed me as someone to take on an important job at the paper. But there are also relationships that start out that way yet cross over to become real friendships that last forever. He was the fun at the dinner table and in our country life. 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. Mrs. Graham looked quite handsome, I thought. On a second trip in December, Graham described Webb on his official schedule as "Newsweek reporter and temporary personal shopper, tour director, and femme de chambre for our group." . My God! she said, covering her pearls with the tips of her fingers. It was with Felix that Phil entered the world of great minds, ideas and books, stimulating conversation, and above all an interest in current events. 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. City Desk But that is the way Phil Graham wanted it. When Johnson had announced he was running for President that year, Phil Graham helped write the speech; he even ended up on his hands and knees, crawling around at the last minute to retrieve one of Lyndons contact lenses, which had popped out. This is a posture unbecoming to a publisher of newspapers. Terms & Conditions I had begun writing so-called light editorials and laying out parts of the editorial page. 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. Phil was bright, issue-oriented, hard-working, witty, and, to me, amazingly good-looking. I think this definition of roles deepened as time went on and I became increasingly unsure of myself. The area was still a wilderness. Grahams mentor, Felix Frankfurter, talked him out of firing Barth, but Graham did print an apologetic note in the paper undermining the original editorial. Eugene Meyer had bought the Washington Post at auction for eight hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in 1933, and in 1946 he made Phil its publisher. By the way, Senator, I didnt say I hated Nixon, she told Dole. The phone rang and I picked it up, not realizing that Phil, too, had picked it up, in his dressing room, with the door shut. . Phil received the larger share of the stock because, as Dad explained to me, no man should be in the position of working for his wife. 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.) CAPTION: Katharine and Phil Graham in 1962, left, after The Post purchased Artnews; above, from left, Phil's half brother Bob Graham -- now a U.S. senator from Florida -- Felix Frankfurter, Ernest Graham and Phil Graham in 1955; right, Phil Graham with John Kennedy on Cape Cod in 1961. At about the same time, she was on a cross-country flight and ran into Senator Bob Dole, who was then working as chairman and chief hatchet man for the Republican National Committee. He is a Jew, a Republican, and rich as hell. 318 Robin Webb Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images CREATIVE Collections Project #ShowUs Creative Insights EDITORIAL VIDEO BBC Motion Gallery NBC News Archives MUSIC BLOG BROWSE PRICING ENTERPRISE VisualGPS INSIGHTS BOARDS CART SIGN IN Images Images Creative Editorial Video Creative Editorial FILTERS CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO Advertise with Us, Sponsored Posts from our Partners Under Philip Graham's management, the newspaper, thanks to its collaboration with the CIA, experienced an upswing and its empire expanded, including the purchase of the then-moribund Newsweek magazine [1] and other media properties. The story, of course, revealed nothing of Mrs. Graham. After a hurricane struck in 1926, the sugar company gave up and his father developed a dairy business on some of the land. In the summer of 1949, there were race riots in Washington over the integration of a city swimming pool. This is a surprising piece of work on every level. With Webb, he traveled to a publishing convention in Phoenix and caused a stir when, taking the microphone in a manic state, he started talking about the alleged affairs of John F. Kennedy, with whom he had been closely associated for some time. Phil's mother had discussed her desire that he go to law school. 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. Work Here The only other inhabitants were Seminole Indians. Facebook gives people the power to share. That decision may have been right for me, she writes, but it was so wrong for Bill and Steve and even for Donso wrong that I wonder how I could have made it. 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