When I opened the door to a downstairs bathroom, I found him. If you think that it's important to have high quality local reporting we hope you'll support our work with a monthly contribution. Katharine soon learned of their affair, when she picked up the phone and heard Phil and Robin talking to each other in words that made the situation plain.. He had come into a job for which he was ill-prepared. 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. Robin Webb was raised in England, UK. Robin Webb Retweeted Franklin Graham @Franklin_Graham 4 Dec 2017 TOMORROW morning Jack Phillips' case will be coming before the Supreme Court. Jovanovich caved, then pulped. On the eve of the first Moratorium against the war, the Post published a nasty editorial (also not quoted in Personal History) that tried to set the paper apart from the antiwar movement. Graham found herself agreeing: Saarinen would not get an offer. I felt he finally had doctors who were treating a real and known illness. Now I can see how extraordinary -- and out of order -- it was for a Supreme Court justice to be stepping over the boundaries to this extent, but I didn't then. 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. Mumble Sauce, About Us Katharine Graham is now seventy-nine, and the Post is in the hands of her son Donald, who is fifty-one. Kennedy immediately agreed, "so immediately as to leave me doubting the easy triumph," Phil noted in a memo afterward. Certainly he saw his whole endeavor as useless unless he could project a future for The Post in the family. . Agnes was perennially engaged in writing books-in-progress. At the beginning of August 1957, Johnson, who was then Senate majority leader, asked Phil to help him win passage of what became the Civil Rights Act of 1957. By June 17th, thanks to his national editor, Ben Bagdikian, he had his own set of papers. We were both up all night, with me trying desperately but to no avail to be of some reassuring help. Tenants in Rent-Controlled Units Could See as Much as 8.9 Percent Increases, The Cranky Redskins Fans Guide to Dan Snyder. I almost rather died!. Profile. 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. After much talk, consultation, and soul-searching, Phil finally decided to accept. I was not about to give up the paper without a fight. 243 replies 897 retweets 2,932 likes Robin Webb Retweeted Phil and I flew to California five days before the Democratic Convention was to open. 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. "Very complicated business, a newspaper," Phil noted in a letter to my father late in 1947. Felix adopted Phil as one of his "boys" before he was appointed by President Roosevelt to the Supreme Court. 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. This is, for me, the most painful thing to look back on. 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. In fact, Graham played a significant role in convincing JFK to appoint Johnson to the vice presidency instead of Missouri Senator Stuart Symington. She had to learn to be a publisher and, what was more, to be a far better publisher than her husband had been. 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. with that of the increasingly powerful conservative media (the Journal editorial page, the Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, etc. Until now, Katharine Graham, considering her influence, has been almost invisible. . (One area that, surprisingly, started to shift under my feet was the Posts editorial quality. How Dangerous Is Getting Shot in the Shoulder? I also think that he realized the illness would recur. He had left me for good, and it was almost more than I could bear. And then nothing more. All the familiar episodes of the Washington, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. We had lunch on two trays on the back porch at Glen Welby, chatting and listening to some classical records. Apparently, the interview went well. But what of it? The End. Her name is Katherine Meyer and I've not a doubt in the world that you'll love her. Food News He ended up on his hands and knees, crawling around at the last minute to retrieve one of Lyndon's contact lenses. Mr. Mrs. Graham seemed not to mind the nasty benches or the almost very funny clowns. Phil drove me home, and we talked for a long time. Both were full of humor -- with an edge. I panicked. AKA Philip Leslie Graham. He began actively recruiting young people with potential, as well as more established reporters and editors. You cant go. Theater He does not have to invent himself, nor does he have to invent a set of principles. I believe that Phil came to the sad conclusion that he would never again lead a normal life. Needless to say, for years I regaled all who would listen with my Katharine Graham story. Local Dining Guide, City Lights 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. This arrangement was never an issue. In one case, there were 200 whites arrayed against an equal number of blacks -- with Park Police on horses in the middle. 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. The legends of correspondents and their varying abilities to cope with a royal visit were countless. 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. 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. Phil was bright, issue-oriented, hard-working, witty, and, to me, amazingly good-looking. I see nothing wrong with the fact that people in power often deal with others on more than one level, she writes. Money, my fathers being Jewish, and sex were taboo subjects at home. Performance/Dance Basketball Those first few years of marriage, Phil and I had a very happy time. His widow was left to confront all the myths and all the insulations that her marriage, her class, and her sex had imposed on her. We now had the morning field in Washington to ourselves. 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. That was some circus! He was really a. If there are any smart literary agents around these days, one of them will copyright the title The Breaking of the President, the piece said, for it is becoming more obvious with every passing day that the men and the movement that broke Lyndon B. Johnsons authority in 1968 are out to break Richard M. Nixon in 1969.. Phil, Kennedy said, when you get elected dogcatcher I will listen to you on politics. But in fact Kennedy had listened to him. In 1963, he and Webb flew to Arizona; he appeared at a . With time, Katharine was becoming more and more troubled, less and less secure. 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. Philip Graham was publisher and later co-owner of The Washington Post. Phil Graham maintained Meyer's intimacy with power. 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. 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." Despite his early apprehensions about my father's wealth, politics, and possible impulse to control, Phil gradually grew very close to him. He also vowed to do a number on the Post, and to go after the Graham familys broadcasting licenses. Simple Pleasures. Her obeisance was institutional and political, not merely personal. He has an example to follow. Its hard to remake decisions and even harder to rethink nondecisions. As a publisher, Don Graham may never face a pair of crises as critical as the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. In later years, he wanted to mold the career of his friend Senator Lyndon Johnson. 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. And yet his periods of lucidity and humor, of lively intelligence, were frequent enough to confuse her and delay any sense of reckoning. See Photos. At Harvard, Phil made the Law Review and, at the end of his second year, became its president. 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. 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. Phil, who had been helping him prepare for this moment for months, was at his side working on his statement. 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.. As I began to lead the way down the steps, a bus-size babushkathe usherfixed me with a hard look and said, Nelzya. Impossible. 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. Robin Webb. 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. Please reload the page and try again. On Jan. 1, 1946, he started his postwar work at the age of 30 as associate publisher of The Post. Gradually, I became the drudge and, whats more, accepted my role as a kind of second-class citizen. and he began an affair with a young Newsweek staffer, Robin Webb. 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.. On Feb. 1, Phil came home briefly. Because of this, he never put a name to Phil's illness. It proceeds from my belief that the editors and reporters have fulfilled the highest standards of professional duty and responsibility.. I got it for her. The whole idea of buying Newsweek and adding yet another huge responsibility to his already too-full plate made me nervous. The mask was made to match, also at Bergdorfs, by Halston, who was then still making hats.) Graham considered the ball a kind of coming out for a middle-aged debutante. But in Pete Hamills column in the New York Post she was suddenly Marie Antoinette. Phil's early memoranda to his executives are stunning in their detailed outline of problems, potential, and objectives. 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. . 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. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. This was in 1988, and I had recently been assigned to the Washington Posts bureau in Moscow. Freelancers Guide Mixing Politics. Instead, it appeared on Page B7. Katharine's husband Philip battled alcoholism and mental illness throughout the marriage. He would help me proofread. He kept questioning whether this was the reason for his success and his prominence. 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. 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. I can see today that his activities had become increasingly frenetic, though still fairly constructively so, the most obvious example of which was his purchase of Newsweek, then a weak, marginally profitable newsmagazine for businessmen, far behind its rival, Time. Probably the greatest debate the paper must face, both in the newsroom and as a story, is the divide between black and white. Eugene Meyer was a Jew who might have preferred not to be. 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. . The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. At last, we could begin to believe that The Post was here to stay. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Both Phil and Felix worked on Joe throughout our dinner, suggesting that the most important first step for the 1950s was the right to vote. When Eisenhower finally sent in federal troops, Phil saw it as a defeat not only for the South but for himself. This was a typical example of the way Phil used power to accomplish something good. CAPTION: Phil Graham, as publisher of The Washington Post, often involved the paper in righting wrongs, as he saw them. 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. Phil was born in 1915 in Terry, S.D., and moved as a boy to the Everglades, where his father, Ernest Graham, was manager of a sugar cane plantation. He held onto his balance for only another month before his first major depression set in. and U.P.I., were infuriating the White House with reporting that showed the contrast between the official statements of the generals and the dire situation in the field, the Post could not keep pace. 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. 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. and mass movements aimed at breaking the President. Eventually, the debate over the war led to a shift in the editorial pagethe conservative Russell Wiggins was replaced by the more liberal Philip Geyelinbut the Post never completely distinguished itself on Vietnam. At the end of the day, everyone except Phil Graham and me had engagements, so he asked if I wanted to have dinner. Graham eventually met Australian journalist Robin Webb, and in 1962 they began an affair. The only other inhabitants were Seminole Indians. 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. Phil Grahams world had been the world of the powerful, and his widow did not want to offend its leading members. Music 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. 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. Openings 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. I was expected to perform all the pulling and hauling; Phil gave directions and put the fun in my life and the childrens. At one point, Mrs. Graham asked for ice cream. We in Moscow had neither the time nor the luxury that would allow us to confirm these legends. He stepped up his connection to Lyndon Johnson. She attended the Madeira School, in McLean, Virginia, one of the few girls schools intent on training young women for a career. Born Katharine Meyer on June 16, 1917, in New York City; died on July 17, 2001, in Idaho; daughter of Eugene Meyer (owner of . Soccer Nonetheless, Phil was the fizz in our lives. Baseball I adopted the assumption of many of my generation that women were intellectually inferior to men, that we were not capable of governing, leading, managing anything but our homes and our children. After the war, Phil Graham was even more national security conscious than before. It wasn't until years later that I looked at the downside of all this and realized that, perversely, I had seemed to enjoy the role of doormat wife. Though Phil knew nothing about the newspaper business -- or any business, for that matter -- his brains and abilities served him well. It is hard to remember now just how far in front the Times was after the Second World War. One did not want to spend the remainder of ones career taste-testing lima beans. On Aug. 3, having apparently made noticeable improvements, he convinced doctors to let him take a retreat to the Virginia farmhouse. The first nights entertainment was an easy choice: the Kirov Ballet. After a hurricane struck in 1926, the sugar company gave up and his father developed a dairy business on some of the land. Early on, Phil predicted that Kennedy and Johnson would be the only candidates to come into the Democratic Convention with sizable blocs of delegates. 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. His executives are stunning in their detailed outline of problems, potential and. Episodes of the land me for good, and it was almost more one. 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