Phil began to look for a chairman for COMSAT and turned to our friend Gen. Lauris Norstad, who was soon to retire as supreme allied commander in Europe. "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.". CAPTION: The Grahams with their children at Glen Welby in 1956; Lally, left, Katherine, Phil (holding Steve), Bill and Don. 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. 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.) The doctor to whom he was sent, Leslie Farber, was an analyst heavily into existential psychology. Curiously I was in complete accord with this idea. 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. Bradlee was incensed, and said so in terms both loud and profane. But he always insisted that we lead our own lives. I insisted. Advertisement. Mrs. Graham blinked and said, I think its time to go.. Liz at Large 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, Va., and committed suicide with a 28-gauge shotgun. 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.. Also, it was part of my bafflement at what I saw as Phil's increasingly strange behavior. journalism. COMSAT was a groundbreaking public/private organization, half government, half telephone company. 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.. Beer See Photos. 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. I did not go to help you. 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. When she travelled to Paris, she quite naturally took up with Brancusi and Rodin and Stein and Satie; she took fencing lessons with Mme. Events, Football He was the publisher (from 1946 until his death) and co-owner (from 1948) of The Washington Post. At some point, however, not quite three weeks after Christmas Eve, the phones started to work again between Phil and Robin. Until now, Katharine Graham, considering her influence, has been almost invisible. 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. Local Dining Guide, City Lights She did not have to. Im here If you need me and I love you. Her story was not easy to figure out. The Life and Death of a Ukrainian Photographer. 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. Two years later, the Grahams took control of the Post Company stock. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. At last, we could begin to believe that The Post was here to stay. Her obeisance was institutional and political, not merely personal. 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. community.". On Feb. 1, Phil came home briefly. Join Facebook to connect with Robin Graham and others you may know. Even when Katharine was the publisher of the Post, David Halberstam writes in The Powers That Be, she felt as if she were in her mothers shadow. Sometimes you become friends with people with whom you work because of some common interest or just because you have to work together. Phil's activities in regard to Little Rock were the first sign for me that something was wrong with him, that his powerful talents could be used in such an idealistic but confusing and irrational way. A South Dakota native, Philip Graham graduated from Harvard Law School and worked as a clerk to two Supreme Court justices. . The Times was immediately in trouble with the White House and the courts. Otis Chandler and his wife, Missy, met Phil and Robin at the airport. As a result, I had no one on whom to lean for advice. Meyer began his financial career by investing six hundred dollars his father had given him for not smoking until he was twenty-one. The Post pursued Watergate as a news story, not as an ideological crusade. She had not thought about what marriage entailed in the way of relationships to spouse and children, Graham writes. 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. Youve never known anything., I cant say I think Mother genuinely loved us, she writes. He never really meant it when he spent weeks vilifying the Times for bias, he told Katharine Q. At one meeting with L.B.J. Phil, Kennedy said, when you get elected dogcatcher I will listen to you on politics. But in fact Kennedy had listened to him. 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. He does not live in Georgetown. Then Mrs. Graham started past it. Baseball Mrs. Grahams personal relations with the powerful and the once powerful became, if anything, even more visible after Watergate. Because of this, he never put a name to Phil's illness. The interview had been heady stuff. I was already committed to Kennedy. Since architects can't go up, they feel like they have to use every inch, so it's a striking building that takes up 80 percent of its block near 12th and F streetsthere are trees and an open area. In middle age and in a state of grief, she suddenly found herself in charge of a newspaper that had yet to show any signs of greatness, and of a group of men who regarded her with, at best, considerable suspicion. For nearly all Post reporters and editors, even those few who ventured to call her Kay, she was the woman who signed our checks, the Queen Mother, a cartoon figure with a lockjaw voice that sounded, to us, like money. He was a manic-depressive. Housing Complex Freelancers Guide As she grew older and more self-confident, she could be imperious, even frightening to her editors and executives, but her desire to please, or at least to get along with, those in power, never entirely faded. I told him I had the feeling that he thought my point of view was different from Phils, but that in general Phil and I had agreed. He was the fun at the dinner table and in our country life. The story, of course, revealed nothing of Mrs. Graham. Phil Graham maintained Meyer's intimacy with power. Much of his activity was related to politics. 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." 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. "Y'all are doingreallocal D.C. After much talk, consultation, and soul-searching, Phil finally decided to accept. Instead, it appeared on Page B7. Mrs. Graham looked quite handsome, I thought. 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. 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. I passed the box without incident. He contracted polio at less than one year of age and, due to the lack of metal immediately after the second world war, was placed by doctors in a plaster of Paris cast for two and a half years. There he was diagnosed with manic depression, a condition today known as bipolar disorder. Then He Tested Positive for COVID. It was plain white crpe with slate-colored beads around the neck and the sleeves. In 1967, Katharine wrote a letter to Johnson (not quoted in the book) expressing enormous empathy: These times are so difficult that my heart bleeds for you. . Only 15 years later, when things were very bad, did I look at the situation ruefully. She'd been told that Harvard was the best, so her dying wish was that he go there. It was he who instilled in Phil a distrust, fear, and horror of any drugs, not to mention shock therapy, claiming that these treatments reduced people to something less than human -- something tranquilized and fishlike. Health problems and death Mainly, the Grahams were poor and had a difficult struggle. It worked, but at the same time it hurt the paper. She was a woman of inchoate ambitionan ambition that took the shape mainly of ambitious friendships and painfully comic intellectual pretensions. He is a Jew, a Republican, and rich as hell. So much of his life flowed from the year as president of the Law Review. There is still a vital distinction. He needed Joe's help because Joe had a solid relationship with the black leadership in the country, especially Roy Wilkins, then executive secretary of the NAACP. On Christmas Eve in 1962, she discovered he was having an affair with Newsweek freelance journalist Robin Webb. Robin Webb. 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. He was the publisher (from 1946 until his death) and co-owner (from 1948) of The Washington Post. In later years, he wanted to mold the career of his friend Senator Lyndon Johnson. The babushka melted. All the familiar episodes of the Washington, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. I rang her up and explained the situation. 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. Needless to say, for years I regaled all who would listen with my Katharine Graham story. He ended up on his hands and knees, crawling around at the last minute to retrieve one of Lyndon's contact lenses. He stormed the podium and berated 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. . View the profiles of people named Robin H Webb. District Line Daily: Our news, politics, arts, food, and sports coverage in one email every weekday. ), it is preposterous to say that the rules of the game are the same. 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. Mann was once asked if Agnes was German. 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. See Photos Inside His Beverly Hills Home. Around this time, my father decided to pass the paper on to Phil and me. On Jan. 1, 1946, he started his postwar work at the age of 30 as associate publisher of The Post. He had left me for good, and it was almost more than I could bear. She once took the time to introduce her friend the architect I. M. Pei to Agnes. I heard Phil and Robin talking to each other in words that made the situation plain. We now had the morning field in Washington to ourselves. . We in Moscow had neither the time nor the luxury that would allow us to confirm these legends. In fact, Graham played a significant role in convincing JFK to appoint Johnson to the vice presidency instead of Missouri Senator Stuart Symington. . We had lunch on two trays on the back porch at Glen Welby, chatting and listening to some classical records. I cant write in the eloquent words he used. 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