Phil wrote a letter in return that Katharine rightly describes as pretty strange: One morning when you were despairing I tried to help you by words. Updated: August 28, 2015 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. Graham heard him. So does her imperious carriage. Son: Stephen Meyer Graham (b. 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. Katharine's husband Philip battled alcoholism and mental illness throughout the marriage. I felt he finally had doctors who were treating a real and known illness. "Very complicated business, a newspaper," Phil noted in a letter to my father late in 1947. 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. Katharine Graham, the general secretary of the Washington Post Company, and a planeload of senior editors would soon arrive in town to conduct it. . 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. For all its glamour and great personages, Personal History is a litany of humiliations, incidents in which the memoirist faults herself for lack of judgment, of independence, or of strength. To find it out and tell it." . Mainly, the Grahams were poor and had a difficult struggle. See Photos. Graham found herself agreeing: Saarinen would not get an offer. Young & Hungry 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. 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. I did not go to help you. One doctor told a friend later, "Phil was determined to get out and really was unbelievably masterful in his ability to manipulate people." Her story was not easy to figure out. 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 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. Latest news and commentary on Robin Webb including photos, videos, quotations, and a biography. 1952) Mistress: Robin Webb (Newsweek journalist, 1962) High School: Miami High School, Miami, FL 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. Phil and my mother also got along well. Phil was born in 1915 in . See Photos. 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.. The whole idea of buying Newsweek and adding yet another huge responsibility to his already too-full plate made me nervous. Two years later, the Grahams took control of the Post Company stock. 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. All around was the loud mewing of big cats and small children. His health, already frail, was affected physically and mentally. Contact Us The pressures were enormous and her preparations for them slight. 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. Her obeisance was institutional and political, not merely personal. View the profiles of people named Robin Webb. Im here If you need me and I love you. My God! she said, covering her pearls with the tips of her fingers. 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. . She'd been told that Harvard was the best, so her dying wish was that he go there. Gear Prudence Circumstances seemed to conspire in challenging Graham. Mrs. Graham blinked and said, I think its time to go.. Yet, the publisher must realize that he has obligations which transcend any commercial interest.". 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. I went because it was my Destiny. Philip Pannell Collapsed at a Statehood Rally. Work Here That Christmas Eve afternoon, the world I had known and loved ended for me. He even got the patients to take a vote among themselves. 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. 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. 12 Phil Graham pictures. And by now helping you I believe and I pray I shall help you. 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. Some of my deepest friendships began with an administration person whom I got to know because of my association with the paper.. It worked, but at the same time it hurt the paper. Darren has released eleven albums to date, plus she has been featured on various other albums and compilations. Youve never known anything., I cant say I think Mother genuinely loved us, she writes. It was unendurable to him not only that he couldn't make any of it right but that he might cause more hurt again. Philip Leslie "Phil" Graham (July 18, 1915 - August 3, 1963) was an American newspaper publisher. The Post pursued Watergate as a news story, not as an ideological crusade. Love is still strong between Dr. Phil McGraw and his wife Robin, who celebrates 43 years of married life in August 2019. In the end he went sadly but willingly, late in the day on June 20. Until now, Katharine Graham, considering her influence, has been almost invisible. 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. 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. At one point, President Kennedy dispatched a Presidential plane to get him from Phoenix to Washington. In college at the University of Florida, Phil enjoyed fraternity life, and girls, and he drank a good deal of bathtub gin. Mumble Sauce, About Us CAPTION: The Grahams with their children at Glen Welby in 1956; Lally, left, Katherine, Phil (holding Steve), Bill and Don. Phil went to school in Miami. 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.. . in 1964, in his bedroom, she sat in an armchair while the President lay down on the bed. Robin Webb. journalism. Museums/Galleries This was in 1988, and I had recently been assigned to the Washington Posts bureau in Moscow. He does not have to invent himself, nor does he have to invent a set of principles. It was a fleeting, mystifying moment, but a very real one. Otis Chandler and his wife, Missy, met Phil and Robin at the airport. Although at the time I didnt realize what was happening, I was unable to make a decision that might displease those around me. Early the next day, Phil and Larry in Paris both wrote letters to Stanton. They both loved power and its use for what they thought of as desirable purposes. By 1906, Meyer had made several million dollars by investing in securities; by 1915, he was worth between forty and sixty million. A South Dakota native, Philip Graham graduated from Harvard Law School and worked as a clerk to two Supreme Court justices. We in Moscow had neither the time nor the luxury that would allow us to confirm these legends. 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. There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. However, on Feb. 4, he traveled to New York and went straight to Idlewild, where he met Robin once more. . On the first great story of her era as publisherthe war in Vietnamthe Posts performance was nearly an embarrassment. It was plain white crpe with slate-colored beads around the neck and the sleeves. 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. It is hard to remember now just how far in front the Times was after the Second World War. Hamill interspersed a faux-sprightly account of the party (And Truman was just marvelous!) with The helicopter landed in a scrubby open field six miles north of Bong Son. It wasnt subtle, but it hit home. Phil, who had been helping him prepare for this moment for months, was at his side working on his statement. I think this definition of roles deepened as time went on and I became increasingly unsure of myself. The car, at least, was waiting and its driver was sober. 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. I never should have gone, she said. This article is adapted from the forthcoming book "Personal History" by Katharine Graham, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf. And he wanted many things. Early in 1940, I was invited by a friend to Sunday lunch with a group at the Ritz Carlton. If there was one journalist she admired more than any other, it was her friend James Reston, and it was Reston who, despite his many virtues, had famously said, I will not have the New York Times muckraking the President of the United States. But in the end she made her decision. To the surprise of some, she easily warded off the blandishments of Samuel I. Newhouse (once with a somewhat duplicitous Theodore Sorensen as her agent) and the Times-Mirror Company. 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. Robin Webb. How Dangerous Is Getting Shot in the Shoulder? My father had said that he himself was too old to let Phil work his way up. {But a fight was unnecessary. Graham eventually met Australian journalist Robin Webb, and in 1962 they began an affair. 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.) It was incredibly exciting. 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 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. The area was still a wilderness. As the junior man in the bureau, I was given the task of finding the hairdresser. 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. To keep a story out of the paper to achieve a purpose, even a fine one, is neither appropriate nor in the spirit of my father's definition of the duty of a newspaper: "To try to tell the truth. On July 5, Johnson held a press conference at which he announced his candidacy. 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. D.C. In England, she lunched with Harold Laski, but then went off to Salzburg to meet her mother, who treated us to the Hotel Bristol and tickets to the music festival there. While a friend went on to visit the socialist experiment in Moscow, Katharine, on the stern advice of her father, did not. In the end, Joe and his like-minded friends bought Phil's argument that this bill was better than nothing. It is not usually advisable, or possible, to argue with a Soviet bus, but my priorities were clear. Women traditionally also have sufferedand many still dofrom an exaggerated desire to please, a syndrome so instilled in women of my generation that it inhibited my behavior for many years, and in ways still does. Why are Vladimir Putins opponents dying? He also vowed to do a number on the Post, and to go after the Graham familys broadcasting licenses. . Perhaps if the turmoil had ended there he might have been able to rest and get his strength back. If by June the Washington establishment is happy with Ronald Reagan, then you should be unhappy with Ronald Reagan. In the coming years, Mrs. Graham formed an especially close friendship with Nancy Reagan. Graham had every reason to refuse or defer publication of the Pentagon Papers. Mrs. Graham looked quite handsome, I thought. 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. But he always insisted that we lead our own lives. 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. We had lunch on two trays on the back porch at Glen Welby, chatting and listening to some classical records. He wants it.". 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. The Life and Death of a Ukrainian Photographer. . 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. At one point, President Kennedy dispatched a Presidential plane robin webb phil graham photos get from. At the airport featured on various other albums and compilations s husband Philip battled alcoholism and mental illness throughout marriage. 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