The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. He wept and wept and couldn't stop. As far as I know, Katharine Graham had not written much since her early days on the Post, when she wrote a magazine column and was the anonymous author of such editorials as On Being a Horse, Mixed Drinks, and Spotted Fever. And yet I dont know of a more complex autobiography by an American business figure, certainly not one that allows itself such moments of weakness, embarrassment, and pain. . So does her imperious carriage. According to Otis, who told me all of this only much later, Phil was disheveled and spinning out ideas, some of which were unintelligible. On July 5, Johnson held a press conference at which he announced his candidacy. If you think that it's important to have high quality local reporting we hope you'll support our work with a monthly contribution. Why are Vladimir Putins opponents dying? . The interview had been heady stuff. While the Times and the two wire services, A.P. 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. "Very complicated business, a newspaper," Phil noted in a letter to my father late in 1947. Phil drove me home, and we talked for a long time. {But a fight was unnecessary. Those first few years of marriage, Phil and I had a very happy time. . 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. Phil asked Joe to bring Felix Frankfurter along. Both were full of humor -- with an edge. 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. She, too, saw it, felt its heat, and began running for the exit. Grahams insecurity as a woman, as a publisher, and as a parent has clear and painful origins. As he was being taken out of George Washington, he loudly proclaimed who he was and that he was a prisoner. 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. 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. She was in a good mood. The first nights entertainment was an easy choice: the Kirov Ballet. 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. . At the beginning of 1954, an event occurred that led up to what I still think of as the defining moment for the company: the unexpected acquisition of the Times-Herald {the other morning paper in Washington}. In the summer of 1949, there were race riots in Washington over the integration of a city swimming pool. AKA Philip Leslie Graham. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. 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. 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. For the first time I had found a man who was that right mix of intellectual, physical, and social charm, and warm and funny on top of that. You cant go. ), it is preposterous to say that the rules of the game are the same. He counterbalanced my ingrown resistance to new and different ideas, and to people with whom I didn't agree politically. 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. The Grahams ran their rather expensive household out of Katharines trust fund; meanwhile, Meyer gave Phil nearly three times as many shares of Post stock as he gave his daughter. 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. There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. It never crossed my mind that he might have viewed me as someone to take on an important job at the paper. Terms & Conditions For the second, I went with the upbeat, down-market option: the circus. 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 1962, he began an affair with Australian journalist Robin Webb, for whom he would later threaten to divorce his wife Katharine Meyer Graham. Gradually, I ceased talking much at all when we were out together. She felt like Trilby to his Svengali; she felt as if he had created her, that she was totally dependent. 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. And I was incredulous -- this brilliant, charismatic, fascinating man loved me! . . Two years later, the Grahams took control of the Post Company stock. Mrs. Graham blinked and said, I think its time to go.. She hardly exists in Woodward and Bernsteins books, and she is portrayed in cardboard terms almost everywhere else. This is a surprising piece of work on every level. He wanted Estes Kefauver to head an anticrime commission and told him so, repeatedly, until Kefauver did it. . Eugene served Agnes breakfast in bed every morning; he ate at the bedside table. It similarly (if with less success) pursued Iran-Contra and Bill Clintons ethical droppings. See Photos. 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. Phil felt such urgency about co-opting Stanton that he decided to send a personal messenger to ensure that the letters reached Frank in New York. He never really meant it when he spent weeks vilifying the Times for bias, he told Katharine Q. Courtesy photo Editor's Note: This story originally appeared in the summer 2019 edition of. The Young Publisher, In many ways, Phil was at his very best as a publisher in these years. Indeed, the paper was still struggling for its life. The violence grew steadily. Coronavirus, Carry-out Critic 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. 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. Best Blood Sugar Supplements 2023: Top Blood Sugar Pills That Work, Best Ebony OnlyFans To Follow For Thick Ebony OnlyFans Videos (2023), Best Dating Sites For Older People: Mature Site To Find Love, Best CBD for Dog Anxiety: High-Quality oils to Calm Your Dog, Proudly powered by Newspack by Automattic. You are stuck with me as a mascot repeat mascot. I had to face facts -- Phil was really gone. . This arrangement was never an issue. His health, already frail, was affected physically and mentally. He had the ideas, the jokes, the games. The most imposing woman in journalism delivers an unexpectedly confessional autobiography. He was married to Katharine Graham, the daughter of Eugene Meyer, the previous owner of The Washington Post. Even now I cant sort out my feelings about this; its hard to separate what was a function of Phils terrible affliction, which manifested itself only later, and what was more basic. City Lights: Your weekly guide to artsy goings-on, hitting your inbox Thursdays and Sundays. Please reload the page and try again. I got it for her. In later years, he wanted to mold the career of his friend Senator Lyndon Johnson. I was expected to perform all the pulling and hauling; Phil gave directions and put the fun in my life and the childrens. I believe that Phil came to the sad conclusion that he would never again lead a normal life. Graham was born to a Lutheran family in Terry, South Dakota. Phil was clearly upset, too. I found him captivating. In addition, Farber believed that labeling something, giving a name to a disorder, changed how the patient viewed himself and was viewed by those around him. In those days, of course, the only possible heir would have been a male, and since my brother was in medicine and had shown little or no interest in the business, my father naturally thought of Phil. 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. . The only other inhabitants were Seminole Indians. Attention would have to be paid. Theater Loose Lips And by now helping you I believe and I pray I shall help you. Ups and Downs. In speeches, Dole had accused her paper of waging an ideological vendetta against the President. On Jan. 1, 1946, he started his postwar work at the age of 30 as associate publisher of The Post. I panicked. But that is the way Phil Graham wanted it. 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. Facebook gives people the power to. The pressures were enormous and her preparations for them slight. Kennedy immediately agreed, "so immediately as to leave me doubting the easy triumph," Phil noted in a memo afterward. Philip Pannell Collapsed at a Statehood Rally. 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. Privacy Policy Everything except Phil's personal expenses was carried by me from the modest trust started for each of the Meyer children by my father. Before making speeches, she shook with terror; in the face of unsettling news, she had the unfortunate habit of breaking down in tears. I'm not sure what triggered Phil's relationship with Lyndon Baines Johnson, but it now seems predictable, even foreordained. When I opened the door to a downstairs bathroom, I found him. He also vowed to do a number on the Post, and to go after the Graham familys broadcasting licenses. See Photos . Until now, Katharine Graham, considering her influence, has been almost invisible. The story would run on the front page of The Post unless the people with the power to do something about it integrated the pools. For years, Katharine witnessed her husbands violent mood swingshis periods of heavy drinking, his bizarre behavior, his prolonged depressions. I did not go to help you. 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. The End. His anxiety as a son-in-law was in place before the wedding vows. Meyer began his financial career by investing six hundred dollars his father had given him for not smoking until he was twenty-one. I told you how lonely it had been when I had visited my Far Country and how I could not get near enough to help you in your Far Country. As a result, I had no one on whom to lean for advice. . In the fall of 1942, Dad and I were on a train coming back from New York, and naturally we were talking about Phil. After a short while, Phil got up, saying he wanted to lie down in a separate bedroom he sometimes used. Mainly, the Grahams were poor and had a difficult struggle. Telling his father about the marriage proved difficult. 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. CAPTION: The Grahams with their children at Glen Welby in 1956; Lally, left, Katherine, Phil (holding Steve), Bill and Don. So, although he remained fairly liberal on domestic issues, he was not so on foreign policy. I insisted. She had to learn to be a publisher and, what was more, to be a far better publisher than her husband had been. It proceeds from my belief that the editors and reporters have fulfilled the highest standards of professional duty and responsibility.. View the profiles of people named Robin Webb. Phil and my mother also got along well. Maksym Levin started documenting war to become famous. After seeing conflict up close, his motivations shifted. He had all the symptoms of severe depression -- overwhelming doubt about himself and his abilities, a desire to seclude himself from the world, indecision even about what pair of shoes to wear, guilt, and occasional talk of suicide. Sometime after the "brainwashing" party, Johnson urged Phil to be at his side during the final push for passage of the bill. Once married, we were confined to running houses, providing a smooth atmosphere, dealing with children, supporting our husbands. Porter High. As enormous cages and nets were being assembled in the circus ring, she declared, I think its time to go.. In a group we remained largely silent, unable to participate in conversations and discussions. 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. Phil Graham maintained Meyer's intimacy with power. Without Graham working as a go-between at the 1960 Democratic Convention, Kennedy might never have picked Johnson as his running mate. I never should have gone, she said. He was intent, however, on making his mark in public life as well as on the stock exchange. While publisher of the Post, he grew so close to L.B.J. 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. On Oct. 28, in the middle of the night, he broke. Local Activists Work With Falls Church City Council To Reinvest In Eden Center. I had visions of that fellow in the balloon, high above the plain, floating into journalistic obscurity, so I did what one cannot ordinarily do with a babushka. 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. City Desk . Sometimes Katharine glimpsed her parents as they were dressing to go out, or as Agnes was being massaged and manicured in preparation for the evenings entertainment. Robin Webb. In 1963, he and Webb flew to Arizona; he appeared at a . . He knew everyone in the building, always taking on the problems of people who worked for him -- worrying over someone's sick child, unmet mortgage payment, health crisis. Under Philip Graham, the Post had no prayer of even pretending to match the standards of the countrys best paper. Post vice president James Truitt arranged with Kennedy to send Air Force 2 to retrieve Graham, who checked in for the first of two brief stays at Chestnut Lodge, then a leading psychiatric hospital in Rockville, Md., that has since burned down. Phil was born in 1915 in . Phil then cut a deal. At dinner at Joseph Alsops one night early in 1961, Graham continually offered political advice to the new President, John Kennedy. 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 As for Phil, at the same time that he was building me up, he was tearing me down. Almost pathetically, he asked not to go back to Chestnut Lodge. It worked, but at the same time it hurt the paper. 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. Though Phil knew nothing about the newspaper business -- or any business, for that matter -- his brains and abilities served him well. Facebook gives people the power to. When the plane landed in Washington, he was taken first to George Washington University Hospital and later to Chestnut Lodge, a private mental hospital in a suburb of Washington. Facebook. He stormed the podium and berated In one case, there were 200 whites arrayed against an equal number of blacks -- with Park Police on horses in the middle. My father said, "Done." In effect [Bill and Steve] lost both parents at once. It was my paying all our living expenses that had allowed Phil to purchase his stock with his income from The Post. Eugene Meyer was a Jew who might have preferred not to be. . Facebook. Email or phone: Password: . 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.. He does not travel the globe to interview foreign leaders. Phil called and told her to come back to America as soon as she could. Gone not to my Far Country but to my Destiny. Local Dining Guide, City Lights After the war, Phil Graham was even more national security conscious than before. Renewed Activity. James Reston, who was then a friend of the Grahams and was the most eminent figure at the Times, repeatedly declined offers to go to the Post. It happens to be a beautiful Destiny and I shall be there while it is beautiful and while it is not. . Apparently, the interview went well. 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. They both loved power and its use for what they thought of as desirable purposes. Naturally, they voted that he be allowed to go. 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. Robin Webb (Robin Elaine Riddle) See Photos. By the way, Senator, I didnt say I hated Nixon, she told Dole. Performance/Dance As is true of any royal visit, there were many logistical problems to be worked out. Openings Film/TV I hadnt realized that the Post wasnt perfectly okay.). Week after week, the leading figures of the Nixon Administration lambasted Graham and the Post for the Watergate stories. And he was very interested in ensuring that women were working on the paper as well as reading it. I bolted out of the room and ran around in a frenzy looking for him. Lets go, lets publish. And by doing that she opened the way to Watergate and to the Posts position as a rival of the Times. We in Moscow had neither the time nor the luxury that would allow us to confirm these legends. After the honeymoon, we settled into our little house, which we rented for $80 a month in a pleasant neighborhood called Burleith. The Formative Years. Soon Phil began telling his friends that he was going to divorce his wife and marry Robin Webb. You've probably heard of her father, Eugene Meyer, who is now publisher of the Washington Post, and has been in the past such things as head of the Federal Reserve. 1952) Mistress: Robin Webb (Newsweek journalist, 1962) High School: Miami High School, Miami, FL My feelings about The Post, however, were very clear. Perhaps if the turmoil had ended there he might have been able to rest and get his strength back. Gravely, as if we were negotiating the Treaty of Ghent, I gave her an annotated copy of Vogue, a mug shot of Mrs. Graham, and a hundred dollars. He left no note of any kind. Unlike Phil, I find it hard to express emotion. In October 1962, Phil accepted an invitation from President Kennedy to serve as an incorporator of the Communications Satellite Corp., known as COMSAT, with the understanding that he would be elected to head it. Because of this, he never put a name to Phil's illness. Mumble Sauce, About Us On the first great story of her era as publisherthe war in Vietnamthe Posts performance was nearly an embarrassment. I felt he finally had doctors who were treating a real and known illness. Robin Webb was raised in England, UK. This is about enough to mention about the family except possibly to reemphasize that they are lousy rich -- for instance, they live in an absurdly huge vulgar castle here, have another in N.Y., have a ranch in Wyoming, etc. He would help me proofread. His mother, the former Florence Morris, had been a schoolteacher in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Although at the time I didnt realize what was happening, I was unable to make a decision that might displease those around me. As a publisher, Don Graham may never face a pair of crises as critical as the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. "Y'all are doingreallocal D.C. I felt close to history. Philip L. Graham. Hockey 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,. I heard Phil and Robin talking to each other in words that made the situation plain. 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. She attended the Madeira School, in McLean, Virginia, one of the few girls schools intent on training young women for a career. 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. The car, at least, was waiting and its driver was sober. 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.) They were both from the South. She rebuffed Norman O. Browns invitation to join the Communist Party. Which is precisely the wrong way to conduct business as the publisher of a newspaper. Only 15 years later, when things were very bad, did I look at the situation ruefully. Page Three By this time, Robin had returned to Paris. Latest news and commentary on Robin Webb including photos, videos, quotations, and a biography. The founder, Lucy Madeira Wing, believed that God was a woman and tried to mold the girls into Shavian Fabians, an army wielding its noblesse oblige. 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. Following the lead of my successful colleague the Latin-American correspondent, I tried to schedule every minute of the two days allotted me. 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. Suddenly, an enormous claw lunged out of the box and toward the innocent calf of the chairman of the Washington Post Company. He loved me, and I loved him. But then, at intermission, she seemed to tire. . That was some circus! Still, I believed that with enough rest he'd recover and we'd go on. 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. He is a Jew, a Republican, and rich as hell. 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. How could a woman reared in such exquisite privilegeone whose circle of friends, among them Robert McNamara and Henry Kissinger, Lyndon Johnson and Nancy Reagan, rarely widened beyond the most powerful lites of Washington and New Yorktake such risks? that he wrote speeches for him and advised him on civil rights and key appointments; he even had power of attorney for Johnson and went out and found him a house to buy. Im not sure she was ever really able to. Graham was gambling every sort of inheritance that was important to her: the paper, her fortune, and, perhaps most important, the judgment of the ghosts who crowded around her. 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.. I rang her up and explained the situation. I was earning about $1,500 a year. Phil, Kennedy said, when you get elected dogcatcher I will listen to you on politics. But in fact Kennedy had listened to him. At once he became my father's close collaborator. 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. 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. 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. His friends are, for the most part, not especially famous. He does not have to invent himself, nor does he have to invent a set of principles. By mid-1948, The Post was still a rocky, if lively, paper. He was in charge of a losing newspaper in what was rapidly becoming the capital of the world. She supported Roosevelt, but her political values were essentially conservative and well within the boundaries of the American upper classes.
Max Ross Son Of Patti Deutsch,
Who Is Underbelly: Badness Based On,
Articles R