Product Code Database
Philip Leslie Graham (July 18, 1915 – August 3, 1963) was an American newspaperman. He served as publisher and later co-owner of The Washington Post and its parent company, Graham Holdings.
During his years with the Post Company, Graham helped The Washington Post grow from a struggling local paper to a national publication and the Post Company expand to own other newspapers as well as radio and television stations. He was married to Katharine Graham, a daughter of Eugene Meyer, the previous owner of The Washington Post.
Graham, who had bipolar disorder, died by suicide in 1963, after which Katharine took over as publisher, making her one of the first women in charge of a major American newspaper.
Graham attended Miami High School and graduated from the University of Florida in 1936, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics, and from Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review and earned a magna cum laude degree, in 1939. Graham was a member of both Florida Blue Key and Sigma Alpha Epsilon (Florida Upsilon chapter) and was both a fraternity brother and roommate of the late Senator George A. Smathers whom he had been close to since attending Miami High School together. In 1939–1940 he was law clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice Stanley F. Reed, and the following year he was clerk to Justice Felix Frankfurter, who had been one of his professors at Harvard.
During World War II, Graham enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces as a private in 1942 and rose to the rank of major by war's end. He worked as an assistant to William Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In 1944 Graham was recruited into the "Special Branch, a super-secret part of Intelligence, run by Colonel Al McCormick". He later worked under General George Kenney, commander of the Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific. His wife followed him on military assignments to Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania up until 1945, when he went to the Pacific theater as an intelligence officer of the Far East Air Force, which was created in August 1944.
In 1948, Meyer transferred his actual control of the Post Company stock (the company was privately owned) to his daughter and her husband. Katharine Graham received 30 percent as a gift. Phil received 70 percent of the stock, his purchase financed by his father-in-law. Meyer remained a close adviser to his son-in-law until his death in 1959, at which time Graham assumed the titles of President and Chairman of the Board of the Post company.
In 1954, Graham was the leading force behind the founding of the Federal City Council, a highly influential group of business, civic, education, and other leaders interested in economic development in Washington, D.C.
In 1960, he helped persuade his friend John F. Kennedy to take Lyndon Johnson on his ticket as the vice presidential candidate, talking frequently to both during the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, California. During the 1960 campaign, he wrote the drafts for several speeches that Johnson gave. After Kennedy and Johnson were elected in November, he successfully lobbying for the appointment of Douglas Dillon as Secretary of the Treasury, and frequently discussed other appointments with Kennedy. In the years after Kennedy's inauguration, he wrote occasional drafts of speeches, primarily for Johnson, but also for the President and for Robert F. Kennedy.
In 1961, Kennedy named Graham to serve as an incorporator for the Communications Satellite Corporation, known as COMSAT, a joint venture between the private sector and government for satellite communications. In October 1961, he was appointed chairman of the group.
Through the Post Company's Newsweek arm, Graham eventually met journalist Robin Webb, and in 1962 they began an affair. In 1963, he and Webb flew to Arizona; he appeared at a newspaper publishing convention inebriated and/or manic. At the microphone he made a number of provocative comments, including the revelation that President Kennedy was sleeping with Mary Pinchot Meyer. His assistant, James Truitt, called for his doctor, Leslie Farber, who flew in by private jet, as did (subsequently) Graham's wife. Graham was sedative, bound in a straitjacket, and flown back to Washington. He was committed for five days to Chestnut Lodge, a psychiatric hospital in Rockville, Maryland.
Graham then left his wife for Robin Webb, announced to his friends that he planned to divorce his wife and immediately remarry, and indicated that he wanted to purchase sole control of the Post Company. In June, in a fit of depression, he broke off his affair and returned home. On June 20, 1963, he entered Chestnut Lodge for the second time, and was formally diagnosed with manic depression (now called bipolar disorder). He was treated with psychotherapy.
Graham later made repeated requests of his doctors to be allowed a short stay away from the hospital, and was "quite noticeably much better", according to his wife. On August 3, 1963, he was permitted to go to their farmhouse in Virginia, Glen Welby, for the weekend. There, Graham killed himself with a shotgun while his wife was in another part of the retreat. His body was found in a bathroom about 1:00 pm. "Philip Graham, 48, Publisher, a Suicide". The New York Times. August 4, 1963. Retrieved October 27, 2018. He was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
During probate, Katharine Graham's lawyer challenged the legality of her husband's last will, written in 1963 in favor of his mistress. Edward Bennett Williams testified that Graham had not been of sound mind when he had instructed Williams to draw up his final will. Williams said that he had, at the same time he prepared the will, written a memorandum for the file stating that Graham was mental disorder, and that he was preparing the will at Graham's direction only to maintain their relationship. The judge in the case ruled that Graham had died intestacy. A compromise was eventually reached whereby Katharine Graham gave up part of her inheritance in favor of her children.
The phrase "first rough draft of history" may have been popularized by Graham, but it did not originate with him. It had been used repeatedly in the Post in the 1940s and the earliest known use was by Alan Barth: "News is only the first rough draft of history,"Alan Barth, review of The Autobiography of a Curmudgeon by Harold L. Ickes in The New Republic, 1943, collected in The New Republic, Volume 108, p. 677 and earlier expressions of similar sentiments dating to the first decade of the 20th century.
Their first baby died at birth. Four children followed: Lally Weymouth, now Weymouth (1943-2025), Donald Edward Graham (born April 22, 1945), William Welsh Graham (1948–2017), and Stephen Meyer Graham (born 1952).
|
|
