Early the next day, Phil and Larry in Paris both wrote letters to Stanton. community.". To find it out and tell it." The only thanks you ever seem to receive is a deafening chorus of carping criticism. . Despite his early apprehensions about my father's wealth, politics, and possible impulse to control, Phil gradually grew very close to him. I see nothing wrong with the fact that people in power often deal with others on more than one level, she writes. To help Phil pay back the debt he incurred in borrowing to buy the stock, I volunteered to pay for all our living expenses -- houses, cars, schools, entertainment -- and did so. Phil remained loyal to Johnson until he lost the bid for the nomination. He told me that he loved me and said we would be married and go to Florida, if I could live with only two dresses, because I had to understand that he would never take anything from my father and we would live on what he made. Housing Complex That. In the midst of the crisis, she wrote to Ehrlichman, saying, What appears in the Post is not a reflection of my personal feelings. Phil knew he controlled The Post because my father had given him the majority of A shares. The violence grew steadily. 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. The year leading up to Grahams death was a turbulent one for him and his family. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. They were both from the South. 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. Mrs. Graham blinked and said, I think its time to go.. Readers like you keep our work free for everyone to read. . He would help me proofread. He was a manic-depressive. Liz at Large Insofar as she was capable of love, I think she loved my father and us, but she was highly complex, and at times deeply unhappy. In her own memoir, Agnes wrote of rebelling against the responsibilities of marriage; she behaved, she said, as if the whole world were in a conspiracy to flatten out my personality and cast me into a universal mold called woman.. Soccer Basketball The most imposing woman in journalism delivers an unexpectedly confessional autobiography. "We have worked out this solution: we'll live in the sort of house, have the sort of furniture, eat the sort of food, go to the sort of places, that young people making salaries like mine can afford.". AKA Philip Leslie Graham. His friends are, for the most part, not especially famous. I remember his commenting on how well Phil wrote and how much he'd like to have him work for The Washington Post. . It never crossed my mind that he might have viewed me as someone to take on an important job at the paper. Phil went to school in Miami. He was quite a success. Soon Phil began telling his friends that he was going to divorce his wife and marry Robin Webb. In the end, Joe and his like-minded friends bought Phil's argument that this bill was better than nothing. Around this time, my father decided to pass the paper on to Phil and me. My father said, "Done." My limousine driver had been given strict instructionsand a sizable bribeto wait outside in case of emergency. 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. I would be recalled to the home office. He does not travel the globe to interview foreign leaders. 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. We went to a restaurant, had a long dinner, talked and laughed a lot, and drank until quite late. 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. 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. He was really a. 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. Ben, with another reporter, was on the site for 36 straight hours. There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. I heard Phil and Robin talking to each other in words that made the situation plain. In the end he went sadly but willingly, late in the day on June 20. Olympic Sports, Savage Love Except for the $500 present, I never used a cent of my own until two years later, when Phil went into the Army. He is a Jew, a Republican, and rich as hell. However, on Feb. 4, he traveled to New York and went straight to Idlewild, where he met Robin once more. Phil and I flew to California five days before the Democratic Convention was to open. Philip Leslie "Phil" Graham (July 18, 1915 - August 3, 1963) was an American newspaper publisher. He stepped up his connection to Lyndon Johnson. . In fact, Graham played a significant role in convincing JFK to appoint Johnson to the vice presidency instead of Missouri Senator Stuart Symington. 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. In early 1963, Phil's condition became public. She really does seem to believe that Watergate was an aberration. I rang her up and explained the situation. During this time, Robin's father Joseph studied physiotherapy so that he could administer it to his son. Dr. Phil McGraw has worked extremely hard over the years . 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. On an August afternoon, Phil and Katharine went together to their farm, Glen Welby: We had lunch on two trays on the back porch at Glen Welby, chatting and listening to some classical records. It was featured, with a photograph, in the next days edition of Pravda. In 1963, he and Webb flew to Arizona; he appeared at a . But those who worked in the Posts newsroom knew one infinitely reassuring fact about Mrs. Graham: that at the most important moments of her professional life she did the right thing. Dr. Phil McGraw and his wife Robin McGraw attend the ceremony honoring Dr. Phil McGraw with a star on The Hollywood Walk Of Fame on February 21, 2020. 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. At one of the embassies, I found a young woman who was said to own a blow-dryer and a brush. 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. He and his girlfriend flew to Phoenix to attend a meeting of The Associated Press. . For years, Katharine witnessed her husbands violent mood swingshis periods of heavy drinking, his bizarre behavior, his prolonged depressions. Some of my deepest friendships began with an administration person whom I got to know because of my association with the paper.. 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. 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. 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. Grahams mentor, Felix Frankfurter, talked him out of firing Barth, but Graham did print an apologetic note in the paper undermining the original editorial. Facebook gives people the power to share. If one compares the approach of the liberal media (the Post, the Times, etc.) 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. Only 15 years later, when things were very bad, did I look at the situation ruefully. Theater After a hurricane struck in 1926, the sugar company gave up and his father developed a dairy business on some of the land. This was a typical example of the way Phil used power to accomplish something good. My father had said that he himself was too old to let Phil work his way up. CAPTION: Phil Graham, as publisher of The Washington Post, often involved the paper in righting wrongs, as he saw them. The only other inhabitants were Seminole Indians. It similarly (if with less success) pursued Iran-Contra and Bill Clintons ethical droppings. Robin was sent away with too little care or attention. Ups and Downs. between the constitutionally protected expression of dissent. 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. 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. Probably the greatest debate the paper must face, both in the newsroom and as a story, is the divide between black and white. According to Otis, who told me all of this only much later, Phil was disheveled and spinning out ideas, some of which were unintelligible. See Photos. This time, he saw his departure as final. His temperament, his interests, and his style are quite different from his mothers. Youve never known anything., I cant say I think Mother genuinely loved us, she writes. Please reload the page and try again. The legends of correspondents and their varying abilities to cope with a royal visit were countless. I was already committed to Kennedy. I felt he finally had doctors who were treating a real and known illness. 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. 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. 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. This was in 1988, and I had recently been assigned to the Washington Posts bureau in Moscow. Curiously, I not only concurred but was in complete accord with this idea.. In 1949, riots were taking place, as members of the Progressive Party led black children to swim in Washington's previously all-white public swimming pools. As the administration got rolling, Phil and I went to the first of several dinner dances at the Kennedy White House. Local Activists Work With Falls Church City Council To Reinvest In Eden Center. In the fall of 1942, Dad and I were on a train coming back from New York, and naturally we were talking about Phil. Nobody knew what to do. Johnson worked actively to cultivate the press, and Phil was always drawn to politics. What made the situation even more complicated was the status of the Post. 2023 Cond Nast. She attended the Madeira School, in McLean, Virginia, one of the few girls schools intent on training young women for a career. 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. 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. 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. Perhaps it was true. In one case, there were 200 whites arrayed against an equal number of blacks -- with Park Police on horses in the middle. It happens to be a beautiful Destiny and I shall be there while it is beautiful and while it is not. That was some circus! I told her that this woman, this very important woman, was gravely ill and in need of immediate medical attention. His mother, the former Florence Morris, had been a schoolteacher in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I never should have gone, she said. On an early trip, he requested a secretary, and the bureau chief dispatched Robin Webb, a young Australian trying to make it as a journalist. We in Moscow had neither the time nor the luxury that would allow us to confirm these legends. 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. 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. I bolted out of the room and ran around in a frenzy looking for him. Its hard to remake decisions and even harder to rethink nondecisions. . 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. Profile. When I opened the door to a downstairs bathroom, I found him. For the second, I went with the upbeat, down-market option: the circus. As enormous cages and nets were being assembled in the circus ring, she declared, I think its time to go.. He wept and wept and couldn't stop. I was expected to perform all the pulling and hauling; Phil gave directions and put the fun in my life and the childrens. . Phil was earning $3,600 a year as a law clerk. They both loved power and its use for what they thought of as desirable purposes. Local Dining Guide, City Lights Renewed Activity. Inside the TV Star's Beverly Hills Home. She, too, saw it, felt its heat, and began running for the exit. Week after week, the leading figures of the Nixon Administration lambasted Graham and the Post for the Watergate stories. She once took the time to introduce her friend the architect I. M. Pei to Agnes. with that of the increasingly powerful conservative media (the Journal editorial page, the Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, etc. Latest news and commentary on Robin Webb including photos, videos, quotations, and a biography. She'd been told that Harvard was the best, so her dying wish was that he go there. Sometimes you become friends with people with whom you work because of some common interest or just because you have to work together. Everything except Phil's personal expenses was carried by me from the modest trust started for each of the Meyer children by my father. Nonetheless, Phil was the fizz in our lives. In the beginning, even Richard Nixon got the same treatment. I think this definition of roles deepened as time went on and I became increasingly unsure of myself. She supported Roosevelt, but her political values were essentially conservative and well within the boundaries of the American upper classes. 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. . Following the lead of my successful colleague the Latin-American correspondent, I tried to schedule every minute of the two days allotted me. Mann was once asked if Agnes was German. you are repressing free expression and limiting the truth.. Five months later, Phil Graham, once again in a trough of depression, ended the affair and came home.}. Books At one point, President Kennedy dispatched a Presidential plane to get him from Phoenix to Washington. After Robert Opel dashed naked across the stage in 1974, he ran for President and settled into the gay leather scene, in the orbit of Robert Mapplethorpe and Harvey Milk. And then nothing more. 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. To a reporter, and especially a reporter in 1996, there doesnt seem to be a need to make any decision at all. As he emerged more on the journalistic and political scenes, I increasingly saw my role as the tail to his kiteand the more I felt overshadowed, the more it became a reality. Phil Graham began referring to his wife, who by 1952 had given birth to four children, as Porky; to heighten the joke, he gave her as a present a French butcher-shop head of a pig. 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. On Nov. 2, I flew up to Idlewild Airport with Phil to see him off to Europe, where he was going to talk to Larry Norstad. 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. Felix adopted Phil as one of his "boys" before he was appointed by President Roosevelt to the Supreme Court. Still, I believed that with enough rest he'd recover and we'd go on. Facebook. Graham was one of four children. . After a short while, Phil got up, saying he wanted to lie down in a separate bedroom he sometimes used. The whole idea of buying Newsweek and adding yet another huge responsibility to his already too-full plate made me nervous. I'm not sure what triggered Phil's relationship with Lyndon Baines Johnson, but it now seems predictable, even foreordained. 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. . Baseball . . In the summer of 1963, Phil seemed to be getting betterhe was undergoing treatment at a psychiatric center in Marylandand there was even hope of resuming a normal life at home. If you think that it's important to have high quality local reporting we hope you'll support our work with a monthly contribution. Graham had every reason to refuse or defer publication of the Pentagon Papers. Coronavirus, Carry-out Critic For whatever reason, I liked to be dominated and to be the implementer. Phil often involved The Post in righting wrongs, as he saw them. My feelings about The Post, however, were very clear. For nearly a year, Phil went to the office hardly at all. 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}. A nice full head of hair, and well combed. Pretty soon this kind of thinkingindeed, this kind of lifetook its toll: most of us became somehow inferior. 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. One doctor told a friend later, "Phil was determined to get out and really was unbelievably masterful in his ability to manipulate people." The appearance of this messenger, a Newsweek stringer whose name was Robin Webb, was the beginning of the tragic end. By mid-1948, The Post was still a rocky, if lively, paper. By this time, Robin had returned to Paris. . Courtesy photo Editor's Note: This story originally appeared in the summer 2019 edition of. Charles Colson, for one, tried to dismiss the conspiracy as fictiona charge that, if true, would probably have ruined the paper forever. Robin Webb (Robin Elaine Riddle) See Photos. 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. I was earning about $1,500 a year. Mrs. Graham looked quite handsome, I thought. Her name is Katherine Meyer and I've not a doubt in the world that you'll love her. 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