There are plenty of lousy biographies in this world, and they languish on musty shelves, ignoredbut whole. Later, she developed an infatuation with the work of Thomas Mann and seems to have made endless demands on the authors time and patience. 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.. As I began to lead the way down the steps, a bus-size babushkathe usherfixed me with a hard look and said, Nelzya. Impossible. 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. I never should have gone, she said. After much talk, consultation, and soul-searching, Phil finally decided to accept. 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. . Only a few minutes later, there was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors. 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. 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. Five months later, Phil Graham, once again in a trough of depression, ended the affair and came home.}. As a way to solidify this code, Ochs developed the idea of a paper of record.. But there are also relationships that start out that way yet cross over to become real friendships that last forever. 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. At one meeting with L.B.J. The truth is that I adored him and saw only the positive side of what he was doing for me. And, under Bradlees urging, she began spending the money necessary to create, among other things, a first-rate foreign staff. I insisted. between the constitutionally protected expression of dissent. 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." The story, of course, revealed nothing of Mrs. Graham. journalism. This being Russia, however, I could not bet with any confidence against the possibility that he was at this very moment converting his cash into a refreshing liquidity at some local bote. Mrs. Graham seemed not to mind the nasty benches or the almost very funny clowns. 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. She had not thought about what marriage entailed in the way of relationships to spouse and children, Graham writes. All rights reserved. All that has changed now, with the publication of Katharine Grahams own Personal History (Knopf; $30). Latest news and commentary on Robin Webb including photos, videos, quotations, and a biography. Katharine saw her parents only sparingly. 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. Contact Us 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. While publisher of the Post, he grew so close to L.B.J. Join Facebook to connect with Robin Webb and others you may know. Phil asked Joe to bring Felix Frankfurter along. 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. Freelancers Guide The legends of correspondents and their varying abilities to cope with a royal visit were countless. We had lunch on two trays on the back porch at Glen Welby, chatting and listening to some classical records. 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. 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. 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. I got it for her. Robin Webb Retweeted Franklin Graham @Franklin_Graham 4 Dec 2017 TOMORROW morning Jack Phillips' case will be coming before the Supreme Court. Circumstances seemed to conspire in challenging Graham. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. 1952) Mistress: Robin Webb (Newsweek journalist, 1962) High School: Miami High School, Miami, FL As he was being taken out of George Washington, he loudly proclaimed who he was and that he was a prisoner. So much of his life flowed from the year as president of the Law Review. She really does seem to believe that Watergate was an aberration. He was a manic-depressive. Phil very much wanted to go to Glen Welby for a break from the hospital, and had started to work on the doctors to obtain their permission. Music Phil suffered from numerous illnesses, increasingly so as the years went by. 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. 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. Meyer began his financial career by investing six hundred dollars his father had given him for not smoking until he was twenty-one. . At Vassar and at the University of Chicago, Katherine took an interest in left-wing politics, which were very much in the air, but always her sense and her sense of breeding prevented her from taking what seemed like extreme steps. He sparked ideas, praised and persuaded, criticized and cajoled. He counterbalanced my ingrown resistance to new and different ideas, and to people with whom I didn't agree politically. 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. I then talked in terms I had inherited from Phil and in a way I would never have done laterand that embarrasses me now, she writes. If you have the goods, you say, Screw it, and publish. Phil firmly stated his intention to divorce me and marry Robin. 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. 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. Those first few years of marriage, Phil and I had a very happy time. The car, at least, was waiting and its driver was sober. 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. With time, Katharine was becoming more and more troubled, less and less secure. That Christmas Eve afternoon, the world I had known and loved ended for me. The only thanks you ever seem to receive is a deafening chorus of carping criticism. The only other inhabitants were Seminole Indians. Not only had I lost my husband but I was about to lose The Post. Robin was sent away with too little care or attention. But, if he does, the decisions should not be as hard for him as they were for Katharine Graham. It was not long before he began looking around town to buy a newspaper. I felt he finally had doctors who were treating a real and known illness. She is a Valkyrian type with something elsea mixture of Valkyrie and Juno., Agness ambitions were fuelled by resentment of her station as a wife and mother. It happens to be a beautiful Destiny and I shall be there while it is beautiful and while it is not. He also vowed to do a number on the Post, and to go after the Graham familys broadcasting licenses. 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. 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. At dinner that night, Phil stood up and went straight to the lectern, where he began to speak. Only a few minutes later, there was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors. In meeting after meeting, in Washington and New York, she was the only woman in the room, and not a self-confident one at that. It all seems so odd in retrospect. How Dangerous Is Getting Shot in the Shoulder? At one point, President Kennedy dispatched a Presidential plane to get him from Phoenix to Washington. 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. 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. 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. Phil Grahams world had been the world of the powerful, and his widow did not want to offend its leading members. Without Graham working as a go-between at the 1960 Democratic Convention, Kennedy might never have picked Johnson as his running mate. I bolted out of the room and ran around in a frenzy looking for him. Getting it launched was a full-time job, requiring massive organizational skills, infinite tact and patience, and a huge amount of time and energy. . Her gesture in retrospect seems to me undignified, considering the awful slamming we were taking from him, she writes. His temperament, his interests, and his style are quite different from his mothers. On Aug. 3, having apparently made noticeable improvements, he convinced doctors to let him take a retreat to the Virginia farmhouse. 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? 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. But then, at intermission, she seemed to tire. Grahams insecurity as a woman, as a publisher, and as a parent has clear and painful origins. Katharine Grahams establishment position on the war did not go unnoticed. Bradlee now sees himself as the self-appointed leader of. I began keeping a little accounts book, dutifully noting every penny spent, including the cost of gas and oil for the car, stamps, groceries, even our personal allowances, which were $9 each per week. This was in 1988, and I had recently been assigned to the Washington Posts bureau in Moscow. . Performance/Dance ~ Gambling. Please reload the page and try again. Needless to say, for years I regaled all who would listen with my Katharine Graham story. The End. I panicked. Phil knew he controlled The Post because my father had given him the majority of A shares. CAPTION: Phil Graham, as publisher of The Washington Post, often involved the paper in righting wrongs, as he saw them. Pei was talking, and Katharine said, I didnt know that., Whats surprising about that? Agnes said. 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. . 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. We had one small cushion, a $500 wedding present from an aunt, which I thought I would use for extras like theater and travel tickets. Inside the TV Star's Beverly Hills Home. I was charmed and dazzled. At Harvard, Phil made the Law Review and, at the end of his second year, became its president. It was plain white crpe with slate-colored beads around the neck and the sleeves. Philip planned to divorce Katharine for Webb and started the process of dividing up the couple's assets. But by the summer of 1958, he was starting to do a little more. Agnes was perennially engaged in writing books-in-progress. 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. Much of his activity was related to politics. The next step in the battle for civil rights was on. When they were taken to see JFK, Phil spoke -- "shrewdly and eloquently," according to Joe -- pointing out all the obvious things that Johnson could add to the ticket and noting that not having Johnson on the ticket would certainly be trouble. Indeed, the paper was still struggling for its life. After a hurricane struck in 1926, the sugar company gave up and his father developed a dairy business on some of the land. Certainly he saw his whole endeavor as useless unless he could project a future for The Post in the family. I had begun writing so-called light editorials and laying out parts of the editorial page. . So, although he remained fairly liberal on domestic issues, he was not so on foreign policy. My limousine driver had been given strict instructionsand a sizable bribeto wait outside in case of emergency. Mrs. Grahams personal relations with the powerful and the once powerful became, if anything, even more visible after Watergate. The whole idea of buying Newsweek and adding yet another huge responsibility to his already too-full plate made me nervous. In 1963, he and Webb flew to Arizona; he appeared at a . . Ben, with another reporter, was on the site for 36 straight hours. Curiously, I not only concurred but was in complete accord with this idea.. She had to learn to be a publisher and, what was more, to be a far better publisher than her husband had been. Early in 1940, I was invited by a friend to Sunday lunch with a group at the Ritz Carlton. 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. Film/TV Grahams father had had trouble coming up with the funds to send him to Harvard Law, but managed to do so. Phil's involvement in the whole matter -- besides pushing Lyndon on its importance from the beginning of their relationship -- began in earnest in July, when he invited {civil rights lawyer} Joe Rauh to our farm in Virginia, Glen Welby. Only 15 years later, when things were very bad, did I look at the situation ruefully. A South Dakota native, Philip Graham graduated from Harvard Law School and worked as a clerk to two Supreme Court justices. For nearly a year, Phil went to the office hardly at all. 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