Katharine Graham: A Real Feminist; Emily Trinks Reviews 'Personal History'

By Emily Trinks | Wednesday, May 7, 1997

Katharine Graham is my new hero. She toppled a president and built a media empire. She raised her children by herself and made The Washington Post a newspaper to be reckoned with. Her memoirs found their way onto best-seller lists. She befriended politicians and celebrities and was known in many circles as 'the most powerful woman in America.' As Mrs. Graham recalled in an interview with Barbara Walters, that title tends to embarrass her, but it is not wholly untrue. In her autobiography Personal History, Katharine Graham recounts her unprecedented success in the publishing world and her dramatic family life, all with frankness, honesty, and grace.

Famous for her role as publisher of The Washington Post from 1963 until stepping down in 1979, Katharine Graham should have a best-selling autobiography. She chronicles her life in a world of wealth, power, fame, and loneliness. That Graham rose to prominence from behind the shadow of her late husband was courageous. With minimal experience, she took the reins of the Post in a time when women were not frequently present in newspaper board rooms and brought the paper into the international spotlight by publishing the Pentagon Papers and breaking the Watergate scandal in the 1970's.

She traces her life from childhood, where she lived in the shadows of her mother and her more worldly older sisters. As a very naive and shy child, she recalls the frequent separation from her parents who were working in Washington and left her with a governess. Although Graham's narration of her childhood could have become intolerably whiny, she does not allow herself to be seen as a 'poor little rich girl.' What is most striking, and unusual by today's standards, is that Graham did not blame her parents, or anyone else, for anything; she tells her story honestly and impartially — exactly what one would expect from a newspaper woman.

Katharine Graham's relationship with her husband, Phil Graham, is an entirely different chapter of her life. She adored him and his circle of friends, and is not ashamed to admit it. Though he treated her poorly, Phil became the publisher of her father's Washington Post in 1946 at the age of thirty and the Grahams attained a voting share of the stock in 1948. Her father gave the majority of the stock to Phil because 'no man should be in the position of working for his wife.'

Katharine and Phil Graham led a glamorous public life from the late 1940's to the early 1960's. Their list of friends included John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and their respective families. But behind this glittery facade, this period of their relationship was an emotional roller-coaster because of Phil's mental illness. Graham speaks at length about his manic depression and eventual suicide with extreme compassion. Though she almost sounds 'too nice' when she talks about Phil, in the end she appears even stronger for revealing her vulnerability.

Phil Graham killed himself in 1963 while on weekend leave from a mental hospital. What Katharine Graham did next is the most surprising: she took her late husband's place at the Post. Although most expected her to sell the paper, the thought never occurred to her. The Post is what she cared for the most — she knew that her father wanted it to stay in the family and that she was the next in line of succession. She describes her entrance into this new world very candidly: 'What I essentially did was to put one foot in front of the other, shut my eyes, and step off the edge. The surprise was that I landed on my feet.'

Katharine Graham most assuredly landed on her feet. She entered a male-dominated world and succeeded as she pushed through the condescension of her male underlings and ran The Washington Post with impeccable skill. Only under Katharine Graham's leadership did the Post become an important national newspaper. In 1971, she challenged the standards of public information and risked her own arrest by printing the Pentagon Papers, a Defense Department study on Vietnam. Later that decade, Graham's paper broke the Watergate story, the scandal that ultimately ended Richard Nixon's political career.

Katharine Graham achieved more in one lifetime than one could imagine. And that is precisely why she ought to be every young woman's hero: by recognizing that she could do the same job as her husband and father , she opened more doors for women than any self-proclaimed feminist ever could. Katharine Graham is not an amazing woman, rather she is an amazing person whose life merits reflection and admiration.

Katharine Graham: A Real Feminist; Emily Trinks Reviews 'Personal History'

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