• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

From her mother, Kay learned to be ungenerous about small things, fearful of being cheated, unable to give things away, and certain that people were trying to take advantage of her. By her own description, she also grew up inclined to be bossy.7 Yet others saw in her qualities of naiveté, candor, generosity, and open-heartedness that she herself seemed unable to acknowledge.

She felt closer to her awkward, distant, yet supportive father. To Eugene Meyer, she attributed her zeal for tiny economies—compulsively turning out lights, never wasting anything. Her father’s talent for such economies, along with great infusions of time, money, and energy, had been crucial in keeping the ailing Washington Post alive while Kay was growing up, when the paper ranked fifth in a field of five in the capital area, far behind the dominant paper, the Washington Evening Star.8 But when Meyer began thinking of retiring in 1942, Kay’s brother, Bill, a doctor, had no interest in running an unprofitable newspaper, so the duty fell to Kay and her new husband, Philip Graham. Kay was besotted with Phil, and so convinced of her own lowliness that she accepted as a matter of course her father’s decision to sell Phil nearly two-thirds of the Post’s voting stock, giving him absolute control. Meyer did it because, he said, no man should have to work for his wife. Kay got the remainder.9

Despite Meyer’s zeal in keeping the paper alive, when Phil Graham took it over, matters were out of hand. Certain people in the newsroom and the circulation department spent most of the day playing the horses and drinking. When Meyer was out of town, the first thing the office boy did every morning was bring one man a half pint of booze and the Daily Racing Form.10

Phil Graham got the place shipshape, gave it an identity by fostering vigorous political coverage, and stamped its editorial page with a strong liberal voice. He bought Newsweek magazine and several television stations, and proved to be a brilliant publisher. But over time, drinking binges, a violent temper, unstable moods, and a cruel sense of humor showed themselves, with particularly devastating effects on his wife. When Katharine gained weight, he called her “Porky” and bought her a porcelain pig. She thought so little of herself that she found the joke funny and put the pig on the porch for display.

“I was very shy,” she said. “I was afraid to be left alone with anybody because I’d bore them. I didn’t speak when we went out; I let him speak…. He was really brilliant and funny. Marvelous combination.”11

Her husband played on her fears. When they were out with friends, Phil would look at her in a certain way when she was talking. She sensed that he was telling her that she was going on too long and boring people. She was convinced that she occupied some lesser sphere and could never meet the expected—but impossible—standard of living up to Shirley Temple. No wonder that, over time, she ceased speaking in public and let Phil take center stage.12 She grew so insecure that she vomited before parties. And by some accounts, the way Phil treated her in private was even worse.13 Her four children grew up seeing their father tear their mother apart. He would drink and build up to a violent rage; then she froze and shut down.

She never confronted Phil, even when he embarked on a series of affairs with other women that supposedly included swapping mistresses with Jack Kennedy.14 Instead, she defended him, swept away by the force of his personality, wit, and brains. The more cruelly he behaved, the more she seemed to want to please him.15 “I thought that Phil literally created me,” she said. “My interests were better. I was surer of myself.”16 He thought she was lucky to have him, and she did too. When he finally left her for Newsweek staffer Robin Webb, she was stunned by the response of one of her friends, who said, “Good!” It had never occurred to her that she might be better off without Phil. But then he began trying