Phil Graham
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, The Washington Post Company.
This article is about the American publisher. For other uses, see Phil Graham (disambiguation).
Phil Graham
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.
Early life and education[edit]
Graham was born to a Lutheran family in Terry, South Dakota. He was raised in Miami where his father, Ernest R. ("Cap") Graham, made a career in farming and real estate, and was elected to the State Senate. His mother, the former Florence Morris, had been a schoolteacher in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Graham was one of four children. One half brother, Bob Graham, was a former governor of the state of Florida (1979–1987) and a former United States Senator representing Florida from 1987 to 2005.
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 with Smathers. 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.
Marriage and children[edit]
On June 5, 1940, he married Katharine Meyer, a daughter of Eugene Meyer, a multi-millionaire and the owner of The Washington Post, then a struggling newspaper. The couple settled down in a two-story row house.
During World War II, Graham enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps 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.
Their first baby died at birth. Four children followed: Elizabeth ('Lally') Morris Graham, now Weymouth (born July 3, 1943), Donald Edward Graham (born April 22, 1945), William Welsh Graham (1948–2017), and Stephen Meyer Graham (born 1952).
Involvement in politics[edit]
While running the Washington Post and other parts of the Post Company, Graham played a backstage role in national and local politics.
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.[1]
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 lobbied 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.
Posthumous honors[edit]
On March 16, 1970, the ABC affiliate station in Miami, Florida (then WLBW-TV), changed their call letters to honor Phil to WPLG-TV; The Washington Post Company (later called Post-Newsweek Stations, and now known as the Graham Media Group) owned the station until it was sold to Berkshire Hathaway in 2014.