She, too, saw it, felt its heat, and began running for the exit. 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. When I opened the door to a downstairs bathroom, I found him. Philip L. Graham. She was a woman of inchoate ambitionan ambition that took the shape mainly of ambitious friendships and painfully comic intellectual pretensions. 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. Almost pathetically, he asked not to go back to Chestnut Lodge. . 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. All that has changed now, with the publication of Katharine Grahams own Personal History (Knopf; $30). 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. After we had lunched as long as we could, someone suggested driving to the country, and we spent the afternoon there. It was plain white crpe with slate-colored beads around the neck and the sleeves. Phil Graham's descent into the abyss of manic depression accelerated, and on 24 December 1962 she discovered that he was embroiled in an affair with a Newsweek stringer, Robin Webb. At dinner at Joseph Alsops one night early in 1961, Graham continually offered political advice to the new President, John Kennedy. Eugene served Agnes breakfast in bed every morning; he ate at the bedside table. 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. 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. Tenants in Rent-Controlled Units Could See as Much as 8.9 Percent Increases, The Cranky Redskins Fans Guide to Dan Snyder. Into this vacuum, Phil moved swiftly and with great assurance. I have now gone. 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. 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. 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. 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. CAPTION: A June wedding: Phil and Katharine Graham married in 1940. As a way to solidify this code, Ochs developed the idea of a paper of record.. Mrs. Graham, for her part, wrote back to him, I was full of admiration anyway for what you did and the way you did it. In the end, Davis sued her publisher for libel and breach of contract in 1982 and received a hundred-thousand-dollar settlement. Agnes was perennially engaged in writing books-in-progress. 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}. 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.. 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. So did Meg Greenfield. He was married to Katharine Graham, the daughter of Eugene Meyer, the previous owner of The Washington Post. He replied, Oh, yes, very. It is not usually advisable, or possible, to argue with a Soviet bus, but my priorities were clear. Contact Us . . I think this definition of roles deepened as time went on and I became increasingly unsure of myself. But even this was hard to understand. . He was really a. 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. At that point, Phil got together with {columnist} Joe Alsop to discuss the merits of Lyndon Johnson as Kennedy's running mate. Porter High. If one compares the approach of the liberal media (the Post, the Times, etc.) This time, he saw his departure as final. She had not thought about what marriage entailed in the way of relationships to spouse and children, Graham writes. Without Graham working as a go-between at the 1960 Democratic Convention, Kennedy might never have picked Johnson as his running mate. . 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. 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. He was quite a success. Nobody knew what to do. Weymouth's brother, Stephen Graham,. I did not go to help you. Phil's mother had discussed her desire that he go to law school. She really does seem to believe that Watergate was an aberration. 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. Her gesture in retrospect seems to me undignified, considering the awful slamming we were taking from him, she writes. 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. 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. One doctor told a friend later, "Phil was determined to get out and really was unbelievably masterful in his ability to manipulate people." I remember his commenting on how well Phil wrote and how much he'd like to have him work for The Washington Post. We now had the morning field in Washington to ourselves. It all seems so odd in retrospect. My father had indeed given Phil the major part of the stock, and Phil had run the company well, but it was the millions invested in the paper by my father that enabled it to survive the years of losses. Phil Grahams world had been the world of the powerful, and his widow did not want to offend its leading members. "Y'all are doingreallocal D.C. Phil suffered from numerous illnesses, increasingly so as the years went by. In college at the University of Florida, Phil enjoyed fraternity life, and girls, and he drank a good deal of bathtub gin. I cant write in the eloquent words he used. 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. See Photos Inside His Beverly Hills Home. 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. I had to face facts -- Phil was really gone. 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. For years, Katharine witnessed her husbands violent mood swingshis periods of heavy drinking, his bizarre behavior, his prolonged depressions. I was already committed to Kennedy. Grahams father had had trouble coming up with the funds to send him to Harvard Law, but managed to do so. After a short while, Phil got up, saying he wanted to lie down in a separate bedroom he sometimes used. View the profiles of people named Robin Graham. The story, of course, revealed nothing of Mrs. Graham. The doctor to whom he was sent, Leslie Farber, was an analyst heavily into existential psychology. Openings View the profiles of people named Robin H Webb. Only a few minutes later, there was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors. She once took the time to introduce her friend the architect I. M. Pei to Agnes. 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. In speeches, Dole had accused her paper of waging an ideological vendetta against the President. Born Katharine Meyer on June 16, 1917, in New York City; died on July 17, 2001, in Idaho; daughter of Eugene Meyer (owner of . {Rauh favored a much broader civil rights bill, but the Senate had watered it down.} At the end of the day, everyone except Phil Graham and me had engagements, so he asked if I wanted to have dinner. From the earliest days of our relationship, for instance, I thought that we had friends because of him and were invited because of him. My feeling that something fundamental had been destroyed was a result of my total commitment and my belief that these feelings went both ways. Curiously, I not only concurred but was in complete accord with this idea.. Jovanovich caved, then pulped. What made the situation even more complicated was the status of the Post. He was the publisher (from 1946 until his death) and co-owner (from 1948) of The Washington Post. All rights reserved. Join Facebook to connect with Robin H Webb and others you may know. . I heard Phil and Robin talking to each other in words that made the situation plain. Her story was not easy to figure out. When Eisenhower finally sent in federal troops, Phil saw it as a defeat not only for the South but for himself. Truitt, an intimate of the Grahams whomBen Bradlee would later force to resign, committed suicide himself in 1981, still despondent over his treatment at the newspaper after Philips death. I bolted out of the room and ran around in a frenzy looking for him. He began actively recruiting young people with potential, as well as more established reporters and editors. But then, at intermission, she seemed to tire. 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. Please reload the page and try again. It proceeds from my belief that the editors and reporters have fulfilled the highest standards of professional duty and responsibility.. The whole strategy for going for voting rights was inspired -- the idea for which Phil was the architect. Terms & Conditions 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. Robin was sent away with too little care or attention. Phil, Kennedy said, when you get elected dogcatcher I will listen to you on politics. But in fact Kennedy had listened to him. Phil called and told her to come back to America as soon as she could. Johnson worked actively to cultivate the press, and Phil was always drawn to politics. This was my most important contribution to the interview with the General Secretary of the Communist Party. Then I lied. . Also, it was part of my bafflement at what I saw as Phil's increasingly strange behavior. In effect [Bill and Steve] lost both parents at once. 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. Not only did Phil own the majority of the stock but he also believed that his efforts as publisher entitled him to ownership. After a short while, Phil got up, saying he wanted to lie down in a separate bedroom he sometimes used. She was flushed, delighted. We danced the twist -- or attempted to. Local Dining Guide, City Lights I hadnt realized that the Post wasnt perfectly okay.). 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? I felt he finally had doctors who were treating a real and known illness. It worked, but at the same time it hurt the paper. Phil and my mother also got along well. From Sioux Falls, Phil and Robin flew to Phoenix, where many of the nation's most prominent publishers were gathered for a meeting of the Associated Press. 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. See Photos. But by the summer of 1958, he was starting to do a little more. Few suggested that Katharine the Great was a first-rate book, or even a solid oneit was flatly written and salted with highly suspect, even paranoid, materialbut one had to wonder if Mr. Jovanovich would have done the same for anyone else. We grew less able to keep up with what was happening in the world. Sometimes you become friends with people with whom you work because of some common interest or just because you have to work together. 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. 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. Nonetheless, Phil was the fizz in our lives. Much of his activity was related to politics. There, in a ballroom full of the nation's top publishers, Phil Graham lost it. I found him captivating. Darren has released eleven albums to date, plus she has been featured on various other albums and compilations. 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. So Phil returned to Washington and stayed with Lyndon almost constantly for several days, working day and night. See Photos. . Early in 1940, I was invited by a friend to Sunday lunch with a group at the Ritz Carlton. 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. Health problems and death Her beginnings were at once privileged and starved. Phil Graham maintained Meyer's intimacy with power. For nearly a year, Phil went to the office hardly at all. The Times was immediately in trouble with the White House and the courts. Five months later, Phil Graham, once again in a trough of depression, ended the affair and came home.}. Though Phil knew nothing about the newspaper business -- or any business, for that matter -- his brains and abilities served him well. . Mrs. Grahams personal relations with the powerful and the once powerful became, if anything, even more visible after Watergate. . 12 Phil Graham pictures. My father received a confidential letter from his friend Kent Cooper, former general manager of the Associated Press, who was living in retirement in Palm Beach. 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. On Jan. 1, 1946, he started his postwar work at the age of 30 as associate publisher of The Post. Its hard to remake decisions and even harder to rethink nondecisions. A few days later, I was assigned to show her and her close friend Meg Greenfield, the Posts editorial-page editor, around the city that was then known as Leningrad. Bradlee had been Phils friend, not hers, but he pushed for the job of managing editor, pushed with his customary blend of charm and vulgarity (Id give my left one for the job, he told her at lunch one day), and she melted. Oh, you know, he said, during a campaign they put these things in your hands and you just read them. (Dole admitted the same to a Times reporter after the 1996 campaign. Since Eisenhower was not very interested, except in theory, and was concentrating on his vacation golf games, there was a vacuum within the administration. , then pulped powerful became, if anything, even more complicated was the architect time to introduce her the! 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