The oldest one was 20, and the youngest one was 11. So they had to deal with it then and always. Brian the question i had after i read the book, why do you want us to know all this . Katharine i really dont suppose that i meant to just tell everything to everybody, but once i sat down to write my story, i just tend to be frank and open and i wanted to be very truthful and i just wrote it the way i saw it and the way the research came up with. I told it as i the best i could. Brian when did you start it . Katharine about 6 1 2 years ago i started to do the research for this book. I actually had the idea even longer ago than that. Brian you addressed early in the book that you wrote it yourself. Katharine i did. But i also had very good assistance from a fine researcher, evelyn, my editor so i felt like i had assistance from them but i wrote the words myself. Brian how did you go about it . Katharine well, for about two years we did research because i s Cable Television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or splite provider. Satellite ber provider. In an interview in 1997 the late publisher of the Washington PostKatharine Graham talks about her book, bookbook personal history. Other topics include the watergate scandal, the pentagon papers, and a journalist strike. Brian Katharine Graham, author of personal history. Did your children learn anything in this book about you . Katharine thats a hard question. Im sure they probably did but i cant tell you exactly what. Brian all the stuff in here about your early life and your husband and all that, did they know that . Have you all talked that o 11. So they had to deal with it brian you addressed early in the b the letters and luckily i grew up in the d my contemporary starting with schoolmates and working on up to politicians and judges and other people that we dealt with and that helped fill in the record. Brian what year did your father buy the post . Katharine in 1933. He had just gotten out of the government. Been out three weeks. Been governor of the Federal Reserve board. Started the Reconstruction Finance Corporation under hoover and he stayed as Federal Reserve chairman under rosevelt and then resigned because roosevelt and then resigned because he didnt like roosevelts monetary policies. The post came up three weeks later for auction on the steps of the building. And he bought it anonymously. Brian what did he pay for it . Katharine 825,000. Brian how many newspapers were in washington . Katharine there were five and the post was sixth. It had a circulation of about 50,000 in a pretty broken down building. So he started in. He was a businessman and thought he knew how to turn around businesses but he never had any newspaper experience and he encountered the most horrendous difficulties in fighting his way up but he did a terrific job starting with nothing. Brian where is mount kisko . Katharine where they lived in the summer was about an hour it was about 50 miles from new york city in westchester county. And we went there every summer. And they had built this large house there thinking my father was going to live there while on wall street and going to commute to wall street but it just got built when they moved to washington. Brian when did your father meet your mother . Katharine in 1912. Hey met in a museum. In new york city. My father had picked up a friend and they were driving downtown in an old car that he had called a stanley steamer and he picked up this friend whom he didnt either know very well or liked very much and said that he would like to give him a ride but he was going to stop off at the japanese print show and they did that and they saw my mother Walking Around in the show and my father said to his friend, thats the woman i am going to marry. And so the friend said, well, then you have to speak to her. My father said, no, no. That would spoil everything. One of us is going to meet her and whoever meets her first will call the other one. And about two weeks later the friend called my father and said, guess what. And he said, you met the girl. And he said, damn you, i have. And i arranged we are all going to have dinner. D from two that was that was lincolns birthday and two years later they were married on lincolns birthday. Brian how was it that he was jewish and she was katharine they werent religious. My mother a little more than my father. He had at the age of 14 or studied for a bar mitzvah and then he decided he said, i believe some of that but not all of it and im not going to do that. And he never he was very, very ethical, very driven, very moral but he wasnt formally religious. She neither was she but her family was and his family was. And so she took us to church but very not very formally. Brian as you grew older, from time to time, antisemitism came in your life. How often . Katharine almost not the a all strangely when i was young. One when i was in school and somebody was casting the merchant of venice and said maybe i should play shy lot because i was jewish and i didnt have any idea i was or there was such a thing. I knew nothing about it and at some other point they said my father was a millionaire and i didnt know what either one meant. I had gone home and asked my mother what it meant to be jewish and what it meant to be a millionaire and i dont think i got an explanation for either one at that point. Then later on in college it came up because of course hitler started and it was more of an issue. But i spent my whole youth unaware of the issues or antisemitism or anything. I mean, i should have known a lot more about it. I should have known both their heritages and what it meant to be jewish, what it meant to be lutheran but it simply wasnt mentioned. By the way, im sure they werent ashamed. Nothing intimate was really talked about in my family. Brian how many other kids in the family . Katharine theres five of us in all and i was the fourth. Brian how many are still alive . Katharine i have two sisters. One older, my sister elizabeth, and young, my sister ruth. She was four years younger than me and two years between all the rest of us broifment and you grew up where . Katharine in well, we spent our first years in new york and thats kind of a strange part of the story because my family moved to washington but they were there for almost four years before they moved us down to washington so we were living mostly with governesses and nurses and teachers in the new york apartment. In fact, they had come up in between and visited us and occasionally my sisters would go down to washington but i was a baby. When i was 4 we all moved to washington. Brian where did you go to college . Katharine i went for two years at the university of chicago and two years at vasser. I changed. Brian and who taught you . Katharine mort and the president of the university taughts together. It was the great ideas in the western world they thought utchins had a series i think started at st. Johns college in annapolis. Learned the great ideas of the western world, but that would be your education. So this course started with plateo and aristotle and worked all the way up to st. Through st. Thomas and to freud and marx and they drilled you. It was a sew krattic method and you had socratic method and you had to stand up for yourself and defend yourself. It was rigorous, very hard. Brian who game your favorite philosopher . Katharine i liked the greeks. I liked aristotle and life. I was interested in that. Brian after college what . Katharine well, i had proudly gone off and gotten myself a job at the university of chicago. Labor id use my relations professor, paul douglas, who later became a senator, knew the publisher of then chicago times, the afternoon tabloid and i went down there and asked him for a job and he said he would take me but if i wasnt any good then i shouldnt think he was going to keep me and i said that would be fine, i would love a tryout. Then i went home and my father asked me to go out to San Francisco with him on a train trip he was taking because he was going to the dough heemian grove. I said bow peoplian grove. Bohemian grove. I said, i love this town. If i swallow my pride, leave chicago, would you help me and he did. Brian you married harry bridges. Katharine well, i covered a labor dispute, a lockout, on the whole waterfront of everybody who was working in the warehouses. It was after two years after the very bloody wellknown longshoreman strike and i was asked by the labor reporter to do the leg work on this. And i went up and down the waterfront and got to know the negotiator for the union, sam cagel, and the head of the warehouse union, and occasionally harry bridges will have to say, although its not correct these days, i socialized with him at night and we went drinking up and down boilermakers. Brian and they were boilermakers . Katharine i fear they were whisky and beer mixed. Ou could get one free if you paid 25 cents for two. Brian my political outlook developed as a committed liberal, primarily passionate, antifascist and antisympathetic toward the labor movement. Still there . Katharine honestly not. I mean, i am you deal and want to deal with organized as r and we do, but i think it then they were just getting organized and the industrial unions were all new. The steel and miners were unorganized and they were just getting organized. Nd so their Labor Conditions were quite bad. Right now some of the unions are fine where they are and some like many businesses i feel have gotten into practices that are not particularly constructive but have to be rethought like featherbedding when its not needed. Brian after all these years, whats your political philosophy today . How would you define yourself . Katharine i think i am just about where i was. Im centrist probably more democratic than not but im independent. I voted for republicans as well as democrats. But i feel strongly about issues of Racial Justice and poverty in cities and i feel strongly that there has to be something done within the context of our of the way this country is. And im obviously committed to all the values such as freedom i speech and the things that feel enlightened and semi liberals are for. Brian do you think people would be surprised that you voted for george bush in 1988 . Katharine i suppose so. I think the most surprised person would be president bush. Brian why do you think he would be surprised . Katharine well, i think that most president s get sensitive about the post and newsweek as well, and he had his issues with us but i think any president does. But i suspect he would not think i voted for him. Brian give us just a thumbnail sketch of the post company today, how many newspapers, television stations, how big is it, what is the gross revenues in a years basis . Katharine we are about 1. 6 billion in annual revenue. The Company Holds mainly the Washington Post and we have a small newspaperings the Everett Harold and half of the international harold tribune and then we have newsweek and we have Six Television stations. A million and a half cable connections. And we also have digital, ink, which is our direct digital, c. , which is our digital website. Brian are you chairman of the executive committee . Katharine no. Yes, i am chairman of the executive committee. Brian how long were you chairman of the Washington Post company . Katharine 30 years. Thats a little bit average. Brian go back to San Francisco. Then you come back to washington. Hen was your first job at the post . Katharine in 19 well, i worked there summers in college. Brian after school . Katharine after school in 1939 when my father came out and suggested i come back from San Francisco and work on the post and i was it was time or me to leave there in many week and we have Six Television stations. A million and a half cable connections. And we also have digital, ink, which is our direct digital, inc. , which is our digital website. Brian are you chairman of the executive committee . Katharine no. Yes, i am chairman of the executive committee. Brian how long were you chairman of the Washington Post company . Katharine 30 years. Thats a little bit average. Brian go back to San Francisco. Then you come back to washington. When was your first job at the post . Katharine in 19 well, i worked there summers in college. Brian after school . Katharine after school in 1939 when my fath letters to the edi i wrote a few editorials of no great moment. Brian when did you meet phil gramm . Katharine that year when i came back. I was really surprised because when i left washington to go to college it was still a very republican town and it was kind of stuffy, you know. There were parties of my parents age and our parties third nd of dances and generation real estate and when i got back the new deal had come and it was prewar. And the town was just full of attractive young men. And it was not the town i remembered. I was simply thrilled. Brian how did you meet him . Katharine i met him in a house where i got to know some of the people two of the people who worked on the post that were living there. There were 12 bachelors in this house. And he was one of the 12. I didnt meet him until he was going out with some other women girls. And i actually met him one night when we had all gone to a restaurant and we were coming back. They were living on s street. They hadnt moved to arlington which they later did. I met him with a lot of other people. The tail end of the party was coming in. Unfortunately a screen fell onto his head and he was startled and looked up and we i looked at him and in fact i met a girl that night when i went to the bathroom and she said she went to law school and i said how marvelous. I could never do that. Tell me about it. How do you do it . She said, well, im engaged to phil graham and he comes back and picks me up and that helps a lot. I just said oh. And then he they broke up and he went out with a friend of mind called alice and she said, did i know phil . I said, no, i didnt. She said, you should. Hes just the greatest. I said oh. And then about new years my sister gave a party and invited everybody at the house where they were then living at. There were 12 of them, and he was in the party. We first got to know each other that way. And this developed rather quickly because the third time we went out together he discussed marriage. Brian third time . Katharine the third time. Brian and how much later did you marry him . Katharine well, i said this was a little hasty. I was really intrigued by the idea but i said we had to be very deliberate and wait a month. And i think we hardly did wait a month. And we were married that june. After the he was working for Justice Supreme CourtJustice Stanley reen and going to clerk for justice frankfurt the next year so when the court adjourned we married june. Brian and both justices were at the wedding . Katharine they were. Brian justice frankfurter was how close to you and your husband during those years . Katharine he was a mentor to phil who had gotten to know him when he was still at the Harvard Law School and who chose the first five clerks from the law school boys he knew of which phil was one. I had know him because my parents were friends of him too. I didnt know him well. We were great friends. He was simply wonderful to us. And he was so funny. And so intimate. He liked the boys to argue with him. And particularly law clerks. If they didnt agree with him they would all indulge in screaming fights. I was shocked by some of their manners. He liked this confrontation. He liked to discuss issues like that. And he was wonderful to me and to us and both you and mrs. Frankfurter who became a friend too were very, very close to us. Brian how many children did you and phil graham have . Katharine we had four. I have four. My oldest is elizabeth who is a journalist and writes for the post on foreign affairs. Brian known as lally. Katharine donald, executive officer of the company. William called bill, who has an Investment Partnership in los angeles but who lives on the vineyard in the summer and very interested and loves the vineyard and lives next door with his children which i love that. Steven which is married and lives in new york and getting a postgraduate degree in literature and is in teaching but he has been in the theater and has produced and has an experimental theater going. Brian you lost a son, though . Katharine i lost our first baby which was tremendously traumatic who was born full term but because it was in washington during at the beginning of the war, hospitals were very busy, and it was it was an accidental thing in the hospital. It really shouldnt have happened. And phil went in the army right afterwards so it was pretty devastating, yes. Brian what impact did it have on you . Do you remember . Katharine well, it was just awful because i thought phil was going in the army, it was the end of everything. Wed never have any children. Something might happen to him. It was a pretty awful moment. Brian how long did you how long philgraham spend in the army . Tharine well, he went in it was 22 1 2 years, i think. Brian when did he go to work for the post . Katharine my father talked to him while he was in officers school. He had by this time invested heavily of both Financial Resources and energy and effort in building up the post and it was very discouraging because they were losing money every year and he was making progress of great kinds, both in circulation and to some extent in advertising but it was terribly discouraging. E wanted to make sure he had a successor in place so there was a point to all this work. My brother by then was a psychiatrist and interested in medicine and so he asked phil if hed be interested. We had long talks about this and i said he has to decide and he did finally and he said what did i think. I loved washington but i was willing he wanted to go into law and politics in florida. Brian is that his brother was senator bob graham . Katharine and phil kind of aspired to what his brother was. I think hes a great and very fine senator. Brian how many years was phil graham publisher . Katharine 17. And during that time he became publisher when he was not quite 31 because my father he went on the post right after he got back and we had terminal leave. It was january, 1946. And six mont