His remarks quickly degenerated, turning into nonsense interspersed with ugly language. As I began to lead the way down the steps, a bus-size babushkathe usherfixed me with a hard look and said, Nelzya. Impossible. The end result of all this was that many of us, by middle age, arrived at the state we were trying most to avoid: we bored our husbands, who had done their fair share in helping reduce us to this condition, and they wandered off to younger, greener pastures. The book has been republished twice by small presses. Phil's invitations often came in the form of commands, and this was one. Inside the TV Star's Beverly Hills Home. Dr. Phil McGraw and Robin McGraw during TNT's "Christmas in Washington 2004" - Show and Audience at National Building Museum in Washington, DC, D.C.,. Her name is Katherine Meyer and I've not a doubt in the world that you'll love her. 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. I would be recalled to the home office. Mainly, the Grahams were poor and had a difficult struggle. 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. Once married, we were confined to running houses, providing a smooth atmosphere, dealing with children, supporting our husbands. My limousine driver had been given strict instructionsand a sizable bribeto wait outside in case of emergency. 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 asked Joe to bring Felix Frankfurter along. Mrs. Graham seemed not to mind the nasty benches or the almost very funny clowns. To this day, I cannot say what the beast wasa leopard, a cougar, a jaguarbut I can still see its talons not an inch from the hose and flesh of my proprietor. In 1962, he began an affair with Australian journalist Robin Webb, for whom he would later threaten to divorce his wife Katharine Meyer Graham. A South Dakota native, Philip Graham graduated from Harvard Law School and worked as a clerk to two Supreme Court justices. He remained seriously depressed but seemed to me to be quite noticeably better, even after only a week or so at Chestnut Lodge. The General Secretary had revealed his plans for a joint United StatesSoviet space mission to Mars, and we led the paper with that world beat. Five months later, Phil Graham, once again in a trough of depression, ended the affair and came home.}. 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. His health, already frail, was affected physically and mentally. Those first few years of marriage, Phil and I had a very happy time. During the McCarthy era, the Post acquitted itself well, especially in the reports of Murrey Marder, but when everyone from the Chicago Tribune to a two-bit conservative publication entitled Plain Talk attacked the Post as Washingtons Pravda, Graham showed dangerous signs of capitulation. He is a Jew, a Republican, and rich as hell. Grahams mentor, Felix Frankfurter, talked him out of firing Barth, but Graham did print an apologetic note in the paper undermining the original editorial. City Desk In the midst of the crisis, she wrote to Ehrlichman, saying, What appears in the Post is not a reflection of my personal feelings. If you think that it's important to have high quality local reporting we hope you'll support our work with a monthly contribution. Soccer All that has changed now, with the publication of Katharine Grahams own Personal History (Knopf; $30). One doctor told a friend later, "Phil was determined to get out and really was unbelievably masterful in his ability to manipulate people." Phil often involved The Post in righting wrongs, as he saw them. 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. Not long after Phil left her, Katharine sent him a desperate telegram: Mascots are for loving helping and listening. Gear Prudence . Joe persuaded Phil to accompany him to urge Kennedy to offer the vice-presidency to Johnson. Phil knew he controlled The Post because my father had given him the majority of A shares. . In those days, of course, the only possible heir would have been a male, and since my brother was in medicine and had shown little or no interest in the business, my father naturally thought of Phil. . See Photos. After much talk, consultation, and soul-searching, Phil finally decided to accept. Since Eisenhower was not very interested, except in theory, and was concentrating on his vacation golf games, there was a vacuum within the administration. View the profiles of people named Robin Webb. 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. Kennedy went back to his headquarters and, according to Arthur Schlesinger in "Robert Kennedy and His Times," told Bobby, "You just won't believe it. 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. 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. She hardly exists in Woodward and Bernsteins books, and she is portrayed in cardboard terms almost everywhere else. Ad Choices. Phil Graham maintained Meyer's intimacy with power. 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. In speeches, Dole had accused her paper of waging an ideological vendetta against the President. 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. And, under Bradlees urging, she began spending the money necessary to create, among other things, a first-rate foreign staff. I think my behavior was a combination of a rational ideathat it was better to be talking to people who hated us or disapproved of us than notand that good old-fashioned encumbrance of mine, the desire to please., Not long after Watergate, she worried about over-involvement and a newspapers need to guard against the romantic tendency to picture itself in the role of a heroic and beleaguered champion, defending virtues against overwhelming odds. Watergate, she writes, had been an aberration, and I felt we couldnt look everywhere for conspiracies and cover-ups.. It was my paying all our living expenses that had allowed Phil to purchase his stock with his income from The Post. But then, at intermission, she seemed to tire. She was in a good mood. 2023 Cond Nast. 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? Under Philip Graham, the Post had no prayer of even pretending to match the standards of the countrys best paper. They both loved power and its use for what they thought of as desirable purposes. 1952) Mistress: Robin Webb (Newsweek journalist, 1962) High School: Miami High School, Miami, FL By this time, Robin had returned to Paris. . Graham eventually met Australian journalist Robin Webb, and in 1962 they began an affair. Graham was gambling every sort of inheritance that was important to her: the paper, her fortune, and, perhaps most important, the judgment of the ghosts who crowded around her. But by the summer of 1958, he was starting to do a little more. 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. 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. Robin Lee Graham is seen on his boat "Dove" during his solo trip around the world in the late 1960s. The Post pursued Watergate as a news story, not as an ideological crusade. . . It introduced him to Felix Frankfurter. At last, we could begin to believe that The Post was here to stay. Son: Stephen Meyer Graham (b. 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. We had lunch on two trays on the back porch at Glen Welby, chatting and listening to some classical records. Curiously I was in complete accord with this idea. 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. At one of the embassies, I found a young woman who was said to own a blow-dryer and a brush. The two most powerful presences in her lifeher mother and her husbandwere both clearly suffering from psychological problems, yet Katharine still felt inferior to them. Hockey Despite his early apprehensions about my father's wealth, politics, and possible impulse to control, Phil gradually grew very close to him. . As far as I know, Katharine Graham had not written much since her early days on the Post, when she wrote a magazine column and was the anonymous author of such editorials as On Being a Horse, Mixed Drinks, and Spotted Fever. And yet I dont know of a more complex autobiography by an American business figure, certainly not one that allows itself such moments of weakness, embarrassment, and pain. . 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. It was featured, with a photograph, in the next days edition of Pravda. In fact, Graham played a significant role in convincing JFK to appoint Johnson to the vice presidency instead of Missouri Senator Stuart Symington. 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. Katharine Grahams establishment position on the war did not go unnoticed. Phil, Kennedy said, when you get elected dogcatcher I will listen to you on politics. But in fact Kennedy had listened to him. This time, he saw his departure as final. Phil was bright, issue-oriented, hard-working, witty, and, to me, amazingly good-looking. Katharine's husband Philip battled alcoholism and mental illness throughout the marriage. Contact Us the tiny fringe of arrogant litists who infect the healthy mainstream of American journalism with their own peculiar view of the world. The fact is, though, that two days after making that statement Colson talked to Howard Hunt about the need to supply more financial help to the defendants in the Watergate trial. He was a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Stanley Reed while waiting to clerk the following year for Felix Frankfurter, his mentor from Harvard Law School. When she travelled to Paris, she quite naturally took up with Brancusi and Rodin and Stein and Satie; she took fencing lessons with Mme. . . CAPTION: The Grahams with their children at Glen Welby in 1956; Lally, left, Katherine, Phil (holding Steve), Bill and Don. We went to a restaurant, had a long dinner, talked and laughed a lot, and drank until quite late. Not only had I lost my husband but I was about to lose The Post. ~ Gambling. 318 Robin Webb Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images CREATIVE Collections Project #ShowUs Creative Insights EDITORIAL VIDEO BBC Motion Gallery NBC News Archives MUSIC BLOG BROWSE PRICING ENTERPRISE VisualGPS INSIGHTS BOARDS CART SIGN IN Images Images Creative Editorial Video Creative Editorial FILTERS CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO After we had lunched as long as we could, someone suggested driving to the country, and we spent the afternoon there. When she suggested to the Newsweek editors that it might be a good idea to hire Aline Saarinen, of the Times, to edit the back of the book, they brushed the suggestion off, saying that the closings were too late, that the physical demands of the job would be too much. Graham supported Eisenhower in 1952 and, in the service of that support, censored the work of his greatest star, the cartoonist Herblock, in the last two weeks of the campaign. That decision may have been right for me, she writes, but it was so wrong for Bill and Steve and even for Donso wrong that I wonder how I could have made it. Name variations: Kay Graham; Mrs. Phil Graham; Katharine Meyer. These days, the Post is usually thought of as the second-best paper in the country, after the Timesor, if not the second-best, then at least tied for that honor with the Wall Street Journal and, stretching some, the Los Angeles Times. 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.) You've probably heard of her father, Eugene Meyer, who is now publisher of the Washington Post, and has been in the past such things as head of the Federal Reserve. Under Ochs, the Times institutionalized the notion of nonpartisan, objective reporting. Signing On to The Post. 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. So does her imperious carriage. The Formative Years. Courtesy photo Editor's Note: This story originally appeared in the summer 2019 edition of. 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. Only 15 years later, when things were very bad, did I look at the situation ruefully. If you have the goods, you say, Screw it, and publish. I had visions of that fellow in the balloon, high above the plain, floating into journalistic obscurity, so I did what one cannot ordinarily do with a babushka. He loved me, and I loved him. Attention would have to be paid. When I opened the door to a downstairs bathroom, I found him. 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.. Most of the year following Phil's breakdown was spent in slow, gradual recovery. Phil viewed this whole sequence of events, with some reason, as a violation of his rights and civil liberties. 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. He does not travel the globe to interview foreign leaders. This was in 1988, and I had recently been assigned to the Washington Posts bureau in Moscow. At once he became my father's close collaborator. 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. He had left me for good, and it was almost more than I could bear. 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