KATHARINE GRAHAM 1917 - 2001

[L]C

# The Kay We Loved

Katharine Graham left behind a remarkably diverse network of colleagues and friends around the world. They include historians and heads of state, diplomats and dress designers, a powerful software magnate and an old-school book editor—and many, many fellow journalists, both rivals and comrades in arms. They have in common only their admiration for her. Here's how some of them are saying goodbye.

HENRY A. KISSINGER
FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE

## 'A symbol of the permanent Washington'

THE FRIENDSHIP Nancy and I shared with Kay Graham is one of the legacies of my government service that we cherish most. Unlike so many Washington relationships that end with the exercise of power, it grew in intensity in the decades after I left office. Yet The Washington Post had been a relentless critic of many aspects of the administrations in which I served. Nor were we on the same side of several issues afterward.

This seeming paradox dissolved in the face of the admiration and affection I came to feel for Kay as a person. Strong and, at the same time, somewhat shy, appreciative of humor, unobtrusively purposeful, never bitter

and always brave, matter-of-factly loyal to her friends and deeply devoted to her family, Kay ennobled all her human relationships. Who can forget the somewhat mischievous way she and Meg Greenfield would comment on the foibles of Washington, or, even more so, the exquisite tenderness with which Kay looked after Meg in the difficult last years of Meg's life.

After a great personal tragedy, Kay took over The Washington Post with no previous experience and not a little diffidence and built it into one of the world's most respected newspapers. She fiercely defended its freedom of expression and was a seminal figure in the battle to submit even the highest officials to ethical and judicial norms.

Kay was also a symbol of the permanent Washington that transmutes the partisanship of the moment into national purpose and lasting values. In that role, she tended to look with a certain wonder at the promi-nence fate had brought her and

to treat it as an obligation, not so much to impose her will as to build the basis for eventual healing. The Kay of the permanent establishment never lost sight of the fact that societies thrive not by the victories of their factions but by their ultimate reconciliations.

Kay and I met in 1969 at the home of Joe Alsop, another member of Washington's permanent establishment. Technically a Washington Post columnist, Joe saw his calling in protecting the nation from the depredations of the ignorant. Though his views rarely intersected those of his publisher, Kay treated Joe with affection and respect, occasionally tinged with exasperation. For his 70th birthday, Kay gave him a big party to celebrate his contributions to our nation, however at odds they were with the Post's editorial policy. A few weeks after I arrived in Washington, Joe invited me to meet Kay at his house for dinner for the three of us "because you cannot be in Washington, dear boy, without knowing Kay Graham."

Unfortunately, the evening did not turn out as Joe had planned. The president had called me into his office just as I was preparing to leave, and I had instructed my secretary to call Joe periodically to explain the delay. Joe considered a telephone call from a secretary a social offense, a subject on which he held forth at great length and with considerable passion when I arrived an hour late. So it happened that Kay was obliged to spend much of the evening calming the irate Joe. This she achieved with customary grace and some humor, gradually reducing Joe's successive eruptions to

CECIL BRATON, COURTESY OF SOUTHERN'S LONDON, © VOGUE, CONDE NAST PUBLICATIONS, INC.

manageable proportions.

As the months went by, Kay remedied the initial lack of dialogue between us. She would invite me to small dinners with one or two people—Bob McNamara, Nelson Rockefeller and Meg Greenfield come to mind—to evoke, with persistent questioning, a discussion about the nation's future beyond the issues of the day.

In the midst of a divisive Vietnam debate in which The Washington Post had been quite unsympathetic to the administration in which I served, Kay telephoned and said: "You need some rest. Let's go to the movies." Ever thorough, she

54 NEWSWEEK JULY 30, 2001

LC

ARTHUR SCHLESINGER JR.
HISTORIAN

‘In vindicating
herself, she
became a quiet
revolutionary’

WE FIRST MET,
Katharine and I,
at the end of the
war, when Phil
Graham came back from the Pa-
cific and I came back from the
European theater and joined my
then wife at a house near the
Grahams in Georgetown.

Phil was an astonishing
man—truly a dazzler, brill-
iant, funny, filled with rest-
less energy, with initiatives
and ideas and passion. Only
John Kennedy among my
contemporaries had compara-
ble gifts of intelligence and
charm. But Phil was also har-
ried by demons, swinging
from manic exuberance to the
destructiveness generated by
clinical depression.

Kay, when I first met her,
was quietly charming and wel-
coming, transparently adoring
of her irresistible husband. She
was the daughter of two pow-
erful figures. Her mother was
an overwhelming force, deeply
self-centered, bearing down
on her children like a galleon
in full sail, all guns firing. Her
father, the banker, public serv-
ant and newspaper publisher
Eugene Meyer, was emphatic
and imperious; but his love for
Katharine and his faith in her
gave his daughter reserve
strength and the capacity not
just for survival but, ultimately,
for victory.

Kay was never altogether a
doormat. She showed inde-
pendence and resolve from an
early age. She left a proper patri-
cian college in the Northeast for
a great urban university in the
Midwest and, on graduation,
went still farther west to join a
rowdy tabloid in San Francisco.
While her husband was over-
seas during the war, she worked
at her father's paper, The Wash-
ington Post. But on his return

'GALLANT LADY':
Transcending the
torments of self-doubt,
Graham firmly and
gracefully established
her authority

sent over Post reviews of the
choices available.

During yet another crisis,
Kay telephoned with a compa-
rable message: "Things are
tough right now. Why don't
you use my house in Virginia
for a weekend?"

It was her way of asserting
the permanent Washington in
which human relations mat-
tered more than the controver-
sies of the day and in which
the political battles were a pre-
lude to a new elaboration of
national purpose.

As the decades went by, the
bonds between Kay and Nancy
and me became ever stronger.
We exchanged annual, what

diplomats would call reciproc-
cal, weekend visits in the sum-
mer, for the timing and guest
lists of which negotiations usu-
ally started in February.

I saw Kay for the last time
about three weeks ago when she
spent a weekend at our house in
Connecticut. She was in good
form, relaxed, interested, hu-
morous. Thunderstorms pre-
vented her from leaving as she
had planned, so we watched a
movie together, and then she
mused aloud about her family.
She wanted to buy a present for
Lally's birthday, and she was
not sure whether to surprise her
or whether, in order to be sure
of Lally's approval, to let her

help pick it out. Kay spoke with
pride and warmth of Lally's
success as a writer, of Steve's
sense of humor and work in the
theater, of Bill's role in the fi-
nancial world and of Don's
surefootedness at the helm of
The Washington Post. She was
clearly at peace with herself.

It is hard to believe that Kay
is no longer among us. But, in a
way, she will never leave us.
Her place in this country will
not be filled, nor the void her
death leaves in the lives of her
friends and family. Yet, in the
pain of the moment, none of us
would trade places with those
whose lives were never touched
by Kay Graham.

JULY 30, 2001 NEWSWEEK

55

KATHARINE GRAHAM 1917 - 2001

BENJAMIN C. BRADLEE, FORMER POST EDITOR

‘The story ran. No one sued.’

WHAT MADE ME REALLY FALL FOR KATHARINE GRAHAM was her excitement and enthusiasm. She loved it all. Once she got over feeling nervous, stopped thinking she would bring the Post and NEWSWEEK to the brink of failure, she had this wonderful enthusiasm that was very contagious. She relished being a reporter and being in the middle of the story.

She used to give us tips and then defend us when her friends got mad. In the 1980s, the United States was tapping Soviet undersea cables. We'd had the story for months, and Bob Woodward had it confirmed. But Bill Casey, the head of the CIA, said he was going to sue our asses under for publishing secret information. So we went back and forth and did more checking, and finally we were ready to publish, when President Reagan called Kay.

Her maid had to get her out of the shower. She got out, got a towel, found a pen, found a piece of paper, got it wet, found a dry piece of paper, and said hello to the president. As he talked about the gravity of the situation, national security and all that, she took notes. She loved it! She was being a reporter. As she listened, she began realizing the president was repeating himself. He was obviously reading from cue cards, and he had gotten to the bottom of the pile and was now rereading the card on the top. She called me and told me this and we had a laugh. She was so excited!

The story ran. No one sued us. She would always say, “It’s your call.” Time and time again. Of course, after a few crash landings, she did say it might be better if she was also there for the takeoff. During Watergate, we were taking a beating for something, George Bush Sr. or Bob Dole [the heads of the Republican Party] was giving us a lot of s--t, she came down to the newsroom and said with a deep sigh, “All I want to know, if this is such a great story, where the hell are the other newspapers?” It showed me I wasn’t the sacred cow to her, that we weren’t scared of each other.

she receded from a journalistic career into the patterned roles of wife and mother.

The 1960s were Kay's time of testing. Phil became more wayward, out of control, hectic, unhinged. The life enhancer turned into a life destroyer. In August 1963 he took his own life, leaving Katharine with four children, a newspaper, a weekly magazine (NEWSWEEK), sundry radio and television stations— and terrible questions about the future.

Though tormented by self-doubt, Kay steeled herself and decided to carry on the family properties. For a while she sat silent and bemused at meetings, not knowing what she was supposed to say or do. She

consulted with her staff and with old friends in the newspaper world—Walter Lippmann and Scotty Reston. Her confidence grew. She brought Ben Bradlee onboard, developed skills she did not know she had and firmly and gracefully established her authority. By 1966, to her wry amusement, Truman Capote gave her a coming-out party in the famous Black and White Ball.

She met more serious challenges with remarkable courage—the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, labor troubles, so much else. She enlarged the size and wealth as well as the influence of the communications empire she inherited. Her leadership, integrity and fortitude set a standard for media

lords in America and beyond.

In vindicating herself, she became a quiet revolutionary on behalf of all women. Brought up to expect a career of marriage and motherhood, she helped transform the expectations that so long had cramped and confined her sex. From ending the archaic Washington ritual of separation of the sexes after dinner to breaking into a business that men regarded as their private property and showing that women can beat men at their own game, she emboldened other women to enter forbidden fields.

Her wonderful memoir tells with uncommon honesty and delicacy the travail and triumph of an American woman. Katharine Graham was a very gallant lady.

## OSBORN ELLIOTT

TOP EDITOR OF NEWSWEEK
FROM 1961 TO 1976

### ‘Kay had a great sense of the ridiculous’

NO ONE WOULD HAVE guessed that anything was wrong with Katharine Graham that happy evening at New York's 21 Club 40 years ago. A few hours before, her husband, Phil, had bought NEWSWEEK, named Ben Bradlee its Washington bureau chief and me as editor. Along with Fritz Beebe, the lawyer—and later company chairman—who had shepherded the deal, we and our wives

56 NEWSWEEK JULY 30, 2001