Katharine Graham, 1917-2001

—Katharine Graham to reporter Howard Fineman in 1984, quoted on Newsweek.com

When I was five years old, I moved to the Washington, D.C. area and discovered the Washington Post.

I was meeting Katharine Graham and I didn’t even know it.

The Post was the first thing I read every day until I left for college. Half the fights my brother and I had growing up were over who got to read the Sports and Style sections first. We clamored over Metro, debated national and international news, spent Sunday mornings lingering over comics and Book World. As I grew older and began writing myself, I made it a ritual to read every word, every day. When I went to college, I found myself missing the heft and wit of this capital newspaper. By that time, like any soul who lived and breathed within the Beltway (and an extraordinary number from without), I knew damn well who Katharine Graham was, and what she stood for.

Katharine Graham died three days ago, in Idaho, far from the city that loved her. The next day, the Washington Post was crowded with her life. I went out and bought a copy, and swallowed each sentence they wrote about her.

Who am I to write anything about Katharine Graham? Ah, but that’s exactly it. Compared to the scope of a life as grand as Katharine Graham’s, I was just a little girl in Washington who wanted to be a journalist. There were—are—lots of us. We watched her.

“We grew up thinking that only men could do the big, important jobs. We always worry that we're not good enough. Do you think there is even one man out there who is worrying about what he just wrote? Not one. We're our own hardest critics.”

—Graham to a nervous columnist in 1984, quoted in The Washington Post

This summer I am home, in Washington, working as a journalist. My roommate is another female journalist, who said to me that for those who did not know her personally, one of the best things about Katharine Graham was her willingness to share her journey out of insecurity. In her Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography, such moments were not confessionals. They could have undermined her authority, her stature as a person of power; they did not. Instead she managed to combine power and humanity. She had doubts. She had questions.

“Don't be silly, dear. You can do it.”

–Luvie Pearson to Graham in Personal History

What struck me three days ago when I heard the news was how women just stopped.

It happened without exception. Because of the shape of my life, many of the women I talked to that day were journalists. They were all a little quieter. She had been the most powerful woman in newspapers for so long—and she had started on that road by chance. But she became great in her role by dint of will and force of personality.

In her autobiography, Personal History, Graham wrote frankly of her insecurity. It was the kind of insecurity bred in women of her time, an insecurity that became a liability when her husband, Phil Graham, committed suicide, leaving the Post adrift—or so Graham initially thought.

She later wrote eloquently of her tendency—and the tendency of all women—to apologize, her struggle to please those around her. But when it came time to act—as surprised as she was that she was there, in her position—she did. It’s something we all hope we can do. And worry we can’t.

“What I essentially did,” she said, “was to put one foot in front of the other, shut my eyes and step off the ledge. The surprise was that I landed on my feet.”

—Graham quoted in the Washington Post

Few things are holy to journalists. But truth and the right to publish it are both sacred. With her powerful backing of The Post’s editorial staff in the Watergate and Pentagon Papers episodes, Katharine Graham entered the annals of history forever. Young journalists in Washington learn Watergate by heart. It happened before I was born, but we all knew the story. And the quote? The quote was famous.

“Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published.”

—Nixon campaign manager and Attorney General John Mitchell to Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein

It could never have been said to a man. Reading about it, years later, I grinned and loved that. And the Watergate stories were published. Later, as Harry Jaffe of Washingtonian wrote in Salon.com, Graham explained the decision to publish the top-secret Pentagon Papers as “instinctive.”

She was “the ultimate brave person,” according to Watergate reporter Bob Woodward. “The ideal boss,” according to former Post Managing Editor Robert Kaiser. “Our maximum leader,” in the words of Post gossip columnist Lloyd Grove.

Instinct means you trust yourself. For women then—and for some women still—that was something to emulate.

“What she shared with them was a ladylike but faintly defiant tilt of her head, the determination not to be bullied. Mrs. Graham had that thing female athletes and activists in women’s sports are always trying to acquire, charge of their own arms and legs. Mrs. Graham took charge of herself. “

—Sportswriter Sally Jenkins in the Washington Post

Katharine Graham took charge not only of herself, but also of Washington. She declined to speak at the all-male Gridiron Club. She refused to cede to the customary after-dinner conversational separation of men and women—and in her refusal, destroyed it. She entered boardrooms full of men and made them think that meeting with her could be normal, or maybe special.

For little girls from Washington who wanted to be journalists, she was evidence that we could be ourselves and exceed ourselves.

Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan ’02, an English and American literature and language concentrator in Lowell House, is the associate managing editor of The Crimson.