In the end, Joe and his like-minded friends bought Phil's argument that this bill was better than nothing. 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. 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. Mrs. Graham seemed not to mind the nasty benches or the almost very funny clowns. 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. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. . 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 an otherwise blissful spring of journalistic overload, a time when the merest cough in the Kremlin merited front-page attention, it came about that the Post and its sister publication, Newsweek, were being awarded a plum: an interview with the General Secretary of the Communist Party. Telling his father about the marriage proved difficult. If you have the goods, you say, Screw it, and publish. Phil firmly stated his intention to divorce me and marry Robin. 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. Around the table in Phil's office sat Secretary of the Interior Julius "Cap" Krug, Undersecretary Oscar Chapman, President Truman's special adviser Clark Clifford, and two or three others. He replied, Oh, yes, very. 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. 243 replies 897 retweets 2,932 likes Robin Webb Retweeted By this time, Robin had returned to Paris. The book has been republished twice by small presses. Once married, we were confined to running houses, providing a smooth atmosphere, dealing with children, supporting our husbands. Phil would be publisher in title and in fact. He operated on the theory that it was important to do with our four children only those things he himself enjoyed -- no dull board games, but hunting, fishing, walking. D.C. By 1906, Meyer had made several million dollars by investing in securities; by 1915, he was worth between forty and sixty million. My feeling that something fundamental had been destroyed was a result of my total commitment and my belief that these feelings went both ways. Advertisement. She once took the time to introduce her friend the architect I. M. Pei to Agnes. 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. If we should ever meet again, I would like to tell you some of my thoughts on what I have come to recognize as a kind of editorial blackmail, in which persons say that if you reject a work. His remarks quickly degenerated, turning into nonsense interspersed with ugly language. The message was that Col. Robert McCormick {the newspaper baron who had purchased the Times-Herald five years before} wanted $8.5 million for the paper. Pretty soon this kind of thinkingindeed, this kind of lifetook its toll: most of us became somehow inferior. John Ehrlichman, Ronald Ziegler, H. R. Haldeman, and Nixon himself all charged the Post with disloyalty. 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. In my boyhood as a reporter, I nearly killed the matriarch of the liberal-media conspiracy. See Photos. . 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. Robin Webb. In college at the University of Florida, Phil enjoyed fraternity life, and girls, and he drank a good deal of bathtub gin. Everything rotated around him, and I willingly participated in keeping him at the center of things. Housing Complex From the start, she was intent on keeping the paper within the family and eventually passing it on to her children. Phil remained loyal to Johnson until he lost the bid for the nomination. Here was someone who combined for me the two parts of my life that I thought were inescapably separate. This is a very significant case and has huge repercussions for freedom of expression & religious liberty in our country. The year leading up to Grahams death was a turbulent one for him and his family. She had not yet developed the steely mask that would later trouble the sleep of her adjutants. On July 5, Johnson held a press conference at which he announced his candidacy. See Photos Inside His Beverly Hills Home. He sparked ideas, praised and persuaded, criticized and cajoled. The only thanks you ever seem to receive is a deafening chorus of carping criticism. . But that is the way Phil Graham wanted it. Facebook. 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. He had left me for good, and it was almost more than I could bear. 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. And yet his periods of lucidity and humor, of lively intelligence, were frequent enough to confuse her and delay any sense of reckoning. Mixing Politics. See Photos. Beer I had no understanding of the terrible depression he had gone through or the polar-opposite mood that was dominating him at the time. I told her that this woman, this very important woman, was gravely ill and in need of immediate medical attention. Phil called and told her to come back to America as soon as she could. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. 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. Mr. 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. Robin Webb (Songbird) See Photos. But, if he does, the decisions should not be as hard for him as they were for Katharine Graham. 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. 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. He and his girlfriend flew to Phoenix to attend a meeting of The Associated Press. 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. From the earliest days of our relationship, for instance, I thought that we had friends because of him and were invited because of him. The moment of happiness you gave me is more help than most people are given in a lifetime, Thank you for it. In fact, Graham played a significant role in convincing JFK to appoint Johnson to the vice presidency instead of Missouri Senator Stuart Symington. This was a typical example of the way Phil used power to accomplish something good. Readers like you keep our work free for everyone to read. Mainly, the Grahams were poor and had a difficult struggle. In speeches, Dole had accused her paper of waging an ideological vendetta against the President. Having Phil back was a tremendous -- and tremendously complicated -- relief. "So I restated the matter urging him not to count on Johnson's turning it down . His health, already frail, was affected physically and mentally. I gather Dr. Farber initially tried to read him passages from Martin Buber, and when this failed to work, they forcibly tranquilized him and put him on the plane. In later years, he wanted to mold the career of his friend Senator Lyndon Johnson. Graham was born to a Lutheran family in Terry, South Dakota. In effect [Bill and Steve] lost both parents at once. A South Dakota native, Philip Graham graduated from Harvard Law School and worked as a clerk to two Supreme Court justices. When I opened the door to a downstairs bathroom, I found him. On Christmas Eve in 1962, she discovered he was having an affair with Newsweek freelance journalist Robin Webb. 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. 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. In his first, brief tenure at The Post, Ben Bradlee was deeply distressed by the side of Phil that used the paper to achieve his political purposes, however worthy. 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. Mumble Sauce, About Us The story would run on the front page of The Post unless the people with the power to do something about it integrated the pools. . The first nights entertainment was an easy choice: the Kirov Ballet. ", "Washington City Paper has made me feel like I am part of the D.C. Latest news and commentary on Robin Webb including photos, videos, quotations, and a biography. Phil also wanted Frank Stanton, still CBS president, to become COMSAT's president and operating head. He loved me, and I loved him. Coronavirus, Carry-out Critic The End. Robin Webb Retweeted Franklin Graham @Franklin_Graham 4 Dec 2017 TOMORROW morning Jack Phillips' case will be coming before the Supreme Court. Nixon told his men to treat the Post absolutely coldly and spoon-feed scoops to its local rival, the Star. . So, although he remained fairly liberal on domestic issues, he was not so on foreign policy. By the way, Senator, I didnt say I hated Nixon, she told Dole. 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. While publisher of the Post, he grew so close to L.B.J. Contact Us Katharine saw her parents only sparingly. All that was mostly over now, though I tried to be with them as much as possible. This is not the sort of moment one could hope to find in the self-examination of Andrew Carnegie or Colonel McCormick, much less of Bill Gates or Rupert Murdoch. At last, we could begin to believe that The Post was here to stay. For nearly a year, Phil went to the office hardly at all. Phil Grahams world had been the world of the powerful, and his widow did not want to offend its leading members. Theater He stepped up his connection to Lyndon Johnson. The next step in the battle for civil rights was on. While the Times and the two wire services, A.P. Except for the $500 present, I never used a cent of my own until two years later, when Phil went into the Army. View the profiles of people named Robin H Webb. 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. Ben, with another reporter, was on the site for 36 straight hours. Liz at Large He is a Jew, a Republican, and rich as hell. It was unendurable to him not only that he couldn't make any of it right but that he might cause more hurt again. Attention would have to be paid. 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 think he felt he'd done such harm the last time around that he just couldn't deal with it, couldn't fix everything. I was earning about $1,500 a year. (According to some accounts, Philip also threatened to divorce Katharine and marry Robin Webb, a Newsweek stringer with whom he'd been having an affair.) That Christmas Eve afternoon, the world I had known and loved ended for me. 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. 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. 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. On the other hand, some of our long talks over the past few years had made it apparent to me that Phil was worried about being a "son-in-law," about having been "given" the paper and the company by my father. Lets go, lets publish. And by doing that she opened the way to Watergate and to the Posts position as a rival of the Times. 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.). Phil asked Joe to bring Felix Frankfurter along. That. He came to Washington in 1917 as a dollar-a-year man for the Wilson Administration; and, while he was holding a variety of positions on the War Industries Board, the Farm Loan Board, and the Federal Reserve Board, the Meyers became friendly with Bernard Baruch, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Evans Hughes. Check out the latest pictures, photos and images of Phil Graham. Before making speeches, she shook with terror; in the face of unsettling news, she had the unfortunate habit of breaking down in tears. Early in 1940, I was invited by a friend to Sunday lunch with a group at the Ritz Carlton. It never crossed my mind that he might have viewed me as someone to take on an important job at the paper. Early the next day, Phil and Larry in Paris both wrote letters to Stanton. 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. She was in a good mood. 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. . 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. 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. So does her imperious carriage. Olympic Sports, Savage Love After a hurricane struck in 1926, the sugar company gave up and his father developed a dairy business on some of the land. When Eisenhower finally sent in federal troops, Phil saw it as a defeat not only for the South but for himself. For the first time I had found a man who was that right mix of intellectual, physical, and social charm, and warm and funny on top of that. Nor did Phil Graham always have the mettle to stand by his best people. 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. All that has changed now, with the publication of Katharine Grahams own Personal History (Knopf; $30). Facebook gives people the power to share. View the profiles of people named Robin Graham. Email or phone: Password: . The truth is that I adored him and saw only the positive side of what he was doing for me. There is no doubt that the vast majority of reporters at papers like the Post are themselves more liberal than the general population: a recent poll showed that eighty-nine per cent of Washington-based correspondents voted for Clinton in 1992. What made the situation even more complicated was the status of the Post. The car, at least, was waiting and its driver was sober. 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. Position as a defeat not only for the nomination later years, he was not so on foreign Policy 1940. Group at the time to introduce her friend the architect I. M. Pei to Agnes his remarks quickly,! 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