The subject of the cruise seemed to cause her, so many years later, intense painpain beyond the loss of her husband. 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. He remained seriously depressed but seemed to me to be quite noticeably better, even after only a week or so at Chestnut Lodge. Agnes was perennially engaged in writing books-in-progress. When she travelled to Paris, she quite naturally took up with Brancusi and Rodin and Stein and Satie; she took fencing lessons with Mme. Those first few years of marriage, Phil and I had a very happy time. You cant go. Porter High. Grahams mentor, Felix Frankfurter, talked him out of firing Barth, but Graham did print an apologetic note in the paper undermining the original editorial. As the junior man in the bureau, I was given the task of finding the hairdresser. Phil remained loyal to Johnson until he lost the bid for the nomination. Courtesy photo Editor's Note: This story originally appeared in the summer 2019 edition of. 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. And then nothing more. Great risk was involved, or so one heard. Basketball He told me that he wanted to preserve our marriage and our family; he said that he loved Robin but would tell her the affair was over, and that he would stay with his family. Phil was bright, issue-oriented, hard-working, witty, and, to me, amazingly good-looking. Felix adopted Phil as one of his "boys" before he was appointed by President Roosevelt to the Supreme Court. Thats enough, Buster, he said, and he dragged Bradlee into a meeting with two officials from the Department of the Interior and with Clark Clifford, from the Truman White House. 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. Please reload the page and try again. Indeed, the paper was still struggling for its life. Soon Phil began telling his friends that he was going to divorce his wife and marry Robin Webb. Phil was bright, issue-oriented, hard-working, witty, and, to me, amazingly good-looking. I found it impossibly difficult to learn and never really did, although my children tried having me learn by stamping out cigarettes and drying myself with bath towels. In doing so, she and her editor, Ben Bradlee, dragged the Post out of the sea of the ordinary and made it great, made it a rival of the New York Times. 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. Phil would be publisher in title and in fact. CAPTION: A June wedding: Phil and Katharine Graham married in 1940. He was a manic-depressive. Liz at Large It was not what Phil needed at that time, but it was what he wanted -- an irresistible temptation to be engaged in an exciting venture that would, in fact, alter the shape of the world. Phil called and told her to come back to America as soon as she could. The whole idea of buying Newsweek and adding yet another huge responsibility to his already too-full plate made me nervous. We danced the twist -- or attempted to. Attention would have to be paid. and U.P.I., were infuriating the White House with reporting that showed the contrast between the official statements of the generals and the dire situation in the field, the Post could not keep pace. Phil, Kennedy said, when you get elected dogcatcher I will listen to you on politics. But in fact Kennedy had listened to him. . We now had the morning field in Washington to ourselves. The Formative Years. We grew less able to keep up with what was happening in the world. By this time, Robin had returned to Paris. Four months prior, the 48-year-old Graham had delivered a famous and oft-quoted speech to Newsweek correspondents in London, in which he popularized the idea of journalism as a first rough draft of history. (Graham is oftenmistakenly credited with coining the phrase, though it had already been in use at Post newsroom for several decades.). Robin . Young & Hungry The babushka melted. But hurry, she said. Phil also wanted Frank Stanton, still CBS president, to become COMSAT's president and operating head. The first nights entertainment was an easy choice: the Kirov Ballet. Instead, it appeared on Page B7. Music 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. View the profiles of people named Robin Graham. By early March 1961, Phil was involved in his old in-depth way with many activities -- political and Post Co.-related -- and he seemed to me to be enjoying himself. and he began an affair with a young Newsweek staffer, Robin Webb. Then Mrs. Graham started past it. When I opened the door to a downstairs bathroom, I found him. But there are also relationships that start out that way yet cross over to become real friendships that last forever. Readers like you keep our work free for everyone to read. . you are repressing free expression and limiting the truth.. On Aug. 3, having apparently made noticeable improvements, he convinced doctors to let him take a retreat to the Virginia farmhouse. 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.,. At one point, Mrs. Graham asked for ice cream. 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. During this time, Robin's father Joseph studied physiotherapy so that he could administer it to his son. Only a few minutes later, there was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors. 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. By mid-1948, The Post was still a rocky, if lively, paper. I adopted the assumption of many of my generation that women were intellectually inferior to men, that we were not capable of governing, leading, managing anything but our homes and our children. In fact, Graham played a significant role in convincing JFK to appoint Johnson to the vice presidency instead of Missouri Senator Stuart Symington. Sometime after the "brainwashing" party, Johnson urged Phil to be at his side during the final push for passage of the bill. Tomorrow: Watergate. In 1962, Phil Graham met Robin Webb, a young Australian woman who had been working in Newsweeks Paris bureau, and he began appearing with her at Newsweek bureaus all over the world. 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. Join Facebook to connect with Robin Graham and others you may know. 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. 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. Suddenly, an enormous claw lunged out of the box and toward the innocent calf of the chairman of the Washington Post Company. My feelings about The Post, however, were very clear. Early the next day, Phil and Larry in Paris both wrote letters to Stanton. He was the publisher (from 1946 until his death) and co-owner (from 1948) of The Washington Post. Despite Phil s constant self-flagellation about being the son-in-law of a rich and powerful clan, he did not shy from the advantages for long. See Photos. . Whoops! Her name is Katherine Meyer and I've not a doubt in the world that you'll love her. All right, she told Bradlee on the telephone, in the midst of a reception at her house, with the Posts lawyer counselling caution in her free ear. I rang her up and explained the situation. He knew everyone in the building, always taking on the problems of people who worked for him -- worrying over someone's sick child, unmet mortgage payment, health crisis. I panicked. Sometimes you become friends with people with whom you work because of some common interest or just because you have to work together. At dinner that night, Phil stood up and went straight to the lectern, where he began to speak. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Join Facebook to connect with Robin H Webb and others you may know. Into this vacuum, Phil moved swiftly and with great assurance. 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. Probably the greatest debate the paper must face, both in the newsroom and as a story, is the divide between black and white. Nixon told his men to treat the Post absolutely coldly and spoon-feed scoops to its local rival, the Star. . Facebook gives people the power to. In the end, Joe and his like-minded friends bought Phil's argument that this bill was better than nothing. The Formative Years. Check out the latest pictures, photos and images of Phil Graham. He kept questioning whether this was the reason for his success and his prominence. . 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. But that did not mean she was strong in all things. 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. In the early days of Watergate, she tried, in rather submissive terms, to build a personal bridge to the one man who exceeded even Nixon in his public hatred of the PostSpiro Agnew. At Harvard, Phil made the Law Review and, at the end of his second year, became its president. See Photos Inside His Beverly Hills Home. I remember his commenting on how well Phil wrote and how much he'd like to have him work for The Washington Post. Email or phone: Password: . Phil viewed this whole sequence of events, with some reason, as a violation of his rights and civil liberties. For whatever reason, I liked to be dominated and to be the implementer. 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. Moreover, Graham was acutely sensitive about the image of the Post as a liberal newspaper and, as a result, had chosen a law firm with close connections to the Republican Party; not surprisingly, Grahams lawyers urged her to delay publishing or not to publish at all. Gradually, I became the drudge and, whats more, accepted my role as a kind of second-class citizen. Katharines mother, Agnes Meyer, was descended from Lutheran ministers. 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. Some of my deepest friendships began with an administration person whom I got to know because of my association with the paper.. At some point, however, not quite three weeks after Christmas Eve, the phones started to work again between Phil and Robin. . Inside the TV Star's Beverly Hills Home. Theater Having Phil back was a tremendous -- and tremendously complicated -- relief. I had begun writing so-called light editorials and laying out parts of the editorial page. 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. 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. 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. At one meeting with L.B.J. Bradlee now sees himself as the self-appointed leader of. Though Phil knew nothing about the newspaper business -- or any business, for that matter -- his brains and abilities served him well. Following the lead of my successful colleague the Latin-American correspondent, I tried to schedule every minute of the two days allotted me. Everything rotated around him, and I willingly participated in keeping him at the center of things. . His health, already frail, was affected physically and mentally. 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. . AKA Philip Leslie Graham. 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. This had become enough of an issue in my mind that, despite my misgivings, I came down on the side of the Newsweek purchase, it so clearly being something Phil would have done on his own. On Saturday, Aug. 3, Phil's driver picked him up at Chestnut Lodge, and then they came to R Street to get me. All around was the loud mewing of big cats and small children. And I was incredulous -- this brilliant, charismatic, fascinating man loved me! 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. Katharine's husband Philip battled alcoholism and mental illness throughout the marriage. I would not insist that Moscow was short on luxury in those days except to note that I did not so much find a hairdresser as create one. He had all the symptoms of severe depression -- overwhelming doubt about himself and his abilities, a desire to seclude himself from the world, indecision even about what pair of shoes to wear, guilt, and occasional talk of suicide. Updated: August 28, 2015 Since Eisenhower was not very interested, except in theory, and was concentrating on his vacation golf games, there was a vacuum within the administration. I bolted out of the room and ran around in a frenzy looking for him. Philip Leslie "Phil" Graham (July 18, 1915 - August 3, 1963) was an American newspaper publisher. . 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. There are plenty of lousy biographies in this world, and they languish on musty shelves, ignoredbut whole. Charles Colson, for one, tried to dismiss the conspiracy as fictiona charge that, if true, would probably have ruined the paper forever. Curie. My limousine driver had been given strict instructionsand a sizable bribeto wait outside in case of emergency. We had lunch on two trays on the back porch at Glen Welby, chatting and listening to some classical records. Mixing Politics. But even this was hard to understand. COMSAT was a groundbreaking public/private organization, half government, half telephone company. 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. Email or phone: Password: . Weymouth's brother, Stephen Graham,. Simple Pleasures. The End. My God! she said, covering her pearls with the tips of her fingers. At a meeting of the Religious Roundtable, Howard Phillips, the head of the Conservative Caucus, warned darkly, You cannot always have Kay Graham going to your cocktail parties and smiling at you. But that is the way Phil Graham wanted it. 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. Robin Harrison Webb. Perhaps it was true. She was flushed, delighted. 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. ), Graham had undeniably, historically, made the right decision, and in the years to come she supported the investigative efforts of the Post; but the signs of her ambivalence about her social and political role never ceased. By 1906, Meyer had made several million dollars by investing in securities; by 1915, he was worth between forty and sixty million. While the Times and the two wire services, A.P. 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. On Jan. 1, 1946, he started his postwar work at the age of 30 as associate publisher of The Post. He sparked ideas, praised and persuaded, criticized and cajoled. . 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.. Like many members of his class and generation, his postwar view was shaped by his work in wartime intelligence; a classic Cold War liberal, he was uncomfortable with McCarthy, but quite friendly with the personnel and policies of the CIA. . 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. Seelye. So, on June 18, 1946, The Post announced that my father was withdrawing from active direction of the paper. He replied, Oh, yes, very. . It introduced him to Felix Frankfurter. Despite his early apprehensions about my father's wealth, politics, and possible impulse to control, Phil gradually grew very close to him. . He committed suicide that day. robin webb phil graham photos Coach Thomas returned to Servite in January of 2018 after coaching at his alma mater, Crespi from 2012-2017. 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. I didn't hear the term "manic-depression" until some years later. She was a woman of inchoate ambitionan ambition that took the shape mainly of ambitious friendships and painfully comic intellectual pretensions. All that has changed now, with the publication of Katharine Grahams own Personal History (Knopf; $30). In a group we remained largely silent, unable to participate in conversations and discussions. Certainly he saw his whole endeavor as useless unless he could project a future for The Post in the family. Graham heard him. ), it is preposterous to say that the rules of the game are the same. Then, in June 1946, President Truman called and asked my father to become the first president of the World Bank. Getting it launched was a full-time job, requiring massive organizational skills, infinite tact and patience, and a huge amount of time and energy. Food News The Post publisher took a mistress, Robin Webb, whom he set up in a large house in Washington and a farm outside of the city. Curiously, I not only concurred but was in complete accord with this idea.. Robin Webb. I got it for her. At that point, Phil got together with {columnist} Joe Alsop to discuss the merits of Lyndon Johnson as Kennedy's running mate. Almost pathetically, he asked not to go back to Chestnut Lodge. 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. City Lights: Your weekly guide to artsy goings-on, hitting your inbox Thursdays and Sundays. It worked, but at the same time it hurt the paper. They met earlier that year. Graham instructed Bradlee to recount what he had seen and heard, and after he had done so the publisher and the three officials worked out a deal: as long as all the city pools were shut down for the time being and would be integrated the following year, the paper would print nothing more of what had happened. Under Phil Graham, the Post had a well-respected editorial page and mediocrity nearly everywhere else; it was not even the best paper in the city. Much of his activity was related to politics. 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. 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. So much of his life flowed from the year as president of the Law Review. The legends of correspondents and their varying abilities to cope with a royal visit were countless. Graham eventually met Australian journalist Robin Webb, and in 1962 they began an affair. I told her that this woman, this very important woman, was gravely ill and in need of immediate medical attention. Renewed Activity. 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. Yet, the publisher must realize that he has obligations which transcend any commercial interest.". In later years, he wanted to mold the career of his friend Senator Lyndon Johnson. But by the summer of 1958, he was starting to do a little more. District Line Daily: Our news, politics, arts, food, and sports coverage in one email every weekday. Apparently, the interview went well. Unlike Phil, I find it hard to express emotion. Graham was born to a Lutheran family in Terry, South Dakota. (I had a French dressa Balmain design, copied at Bergdorf Goodman, she writes. As the administration got rolling, Phil and I went to the first of several dinner dances at the Kennedy White House. Local Dining Guide, City Lights 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.