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. City Desk Only a few minutes later, there was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors. My father had said that he himself was too old to let Phil work his way up. We grew less able to keep up with what was happening in the world. 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. She, too, saw it, felt its heat, and began running for the exit. After we had lunched as long as we could, someone suggested driving to the country, and we spent the afternoon there. There is still a vital distinction. 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.). But even this was hard to understand. 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}. In the summer of 1963, Phil seemed to be getting betterhe was undergoing treatment at a psychiatric center in Marylandand there was even hope of resuming a normal life at home. . 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. CAPTION: A June wedding: Phil and Katharine Graham married in 1940. John Ehrlichman, Ronald Ziegler, H. R. Haldeman, and Nixon himself all charged the Post with disloyalty. He does not travel the globe to interview foreign leaders. Profile. In the end he went sadly but willingly, late in the day on June 20. Because of this, he never put a name to Phil's illness. 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 One doctor told a friend later, "Phil was determined to get out and really was unbelievably masterful in his ability to manipulate people." Eugene Meyer was a Jew who might have preferred not to be. 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. A nice full head of hair, and well combed. In some ways, this was the bottom moment for me -- very confusing, very difficult, and very painful. Books Phil called and told her to come back to America as soon as she could. You cant go. Around this time, my father decided to pass the paper on to Phil and me. 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. Philip Leslie "Phil" Graham (July 18, 1915 - August 3, 1963) was an American newspaper publisher. That was some circus! I believe that Phil came to the sad conclusion that he would never again lead a normal life. See Photos Inside His Beverly Hills Home. We in Moscow had neither the time nor the luxury that would allow us to confirm these legends. He does not live in Georgetown. It wasnt 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. From the start, Katharine was dazzled by her husbands intelligence and wit, his ability to light up a room: He began to liberate me from my family and from the myths they had propagated. But she was resentful as well. Graham also had a hand in the appointments of no less than three more friends to the Kennedy administration, including then-Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon. After much talk, consultation, and soul-searching, Phil finally decided to accept. between the constitutionally protected expression of dissent. Robin Webb (Robin Elaine Riddle) See Photos. He was simply not interested in the Times ideal so much as he was in making the Post a player in Washington and, perhaps more, in being a player himself. I cant write in the eloquent words he used. In the beginning, even Richard Nixon got the same treatment. . 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. View the profiles of people named Robin Webb. "So I restated the matter urging him not to count on Johnson's turning it down . To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. So much of his life flowed from the year as president of the Law Review. But I want you to know I am among the many people in this country who believe in you and are behind you with trust and devotion.. . Early in 1940, I was invited by a friend to Sunday lunch with a group at the Ritz Carlton. Katharine's husband Philip battled alcoholism and mental illness throughout the marriage. Work Here Phils greatest successes were in business: buying and absorbing the Times-Herald in 1954, purchasing Newsweek (for a song) in 1961, and making inroads against the dominant paper in town, the Evening Star (which folded in 1981). See Photos. Perhaps it was true. During that Leningrad trip, the only moment that hinted at something mysterious and human came when we were in a map room at the Hermitage Museum. Following the lead of my successful colleague the Latin-American correspondent, I tried to schedule every minute of the two days allotted me. 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. 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. Gradually, I became the drudge and, whats more, accepted my role as a kind of second-class citizen. See Photos. For nearly a year, Phil went to the office hardly at all. Another habit of his that emerged during those years was that, when we were with friends and I was talking, he would look at me in such a way that I felt I was going on too long and boring people. Soon Phil began telling his friends that he was going to divorce his wife and marry Robin Webb. When Johnson had announced he was running for President that year, Phil Graham helped write the speech; he even ended up on his hands and knees, crawling around at the last minute to retrieve one of Lyndons contact lenses, which had popped out. This is a posture unbecoming to a publisher of newspapers. Most of the year following Phil's breakdown was spent in slow, gradual recovery. Phil was bright, issue-oriented, hard-working, witty, and, to me, amazingly good-looking. 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. . 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. He was quite a success. I didnt think much about it at the time, but this was the beginning of a pattern that I can see now was quite unhealthy. Page Three The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. It similarly (if with less success) pursued Iran-Contra and Bill Clintons ethical droppings. I panicked. 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 went to school in Miami. The reporters and editors might have got a nervous thrill from the Administrations hysteria, but Mrs. Graham did not. This arrangement was never an issue. Seelye. 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. I never should have gone, she said. Whoops! As the junior man in the bureau, I was given the task of finding the hairdresser. Philip Graham was publisher and later co-owner of The Washington Post. 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 never really meant it when he spent weeks vilifying the Times for bias, he told Katharine Q. Phil also wanted Frank Stanton, still CBS president, to become COMSAT's president and operating head. This was a typical example of the way Phil used power to accomplish something good. As is true of any royal visit, there were many logistical problems to be worked out. We don't have one. Phil Grahams world had been the world of the powerful, and his widow did not want to offend its leading members. Only a few minutes later, there was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors. 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.. . . Phil was born in 1915 in . We were both up all night, with me trying desperately but to no avail to be of some reassuring help. She was in a good mood. . The car, at least, was waiting and its driver was sober. In 1967, Katharine wrote a letter to Johnson (not quoted in the book) expressing enormous empathy: These times are so difficult that my heart bleeds for you. In 1963, he and Webb flew to Arizona; he appeared at a . 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