Graham was born on July 18, 1915 in Terry, South Dakota, the son of Ernest R. Graham, and of Florence Morris. When he was six, his family moved to Dade County, Florida, where his father engaged in farming and cattle raising, and served as a state senator and state roads commissioner.
After graduating from the University of Florida in 1936, Graham drove a truck for his father's dairy for several months. Then he entered Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Law Review. He graduated in 1939.
Upon graduation Graham became a Supreme Court law clerk, first to Justice Stanley Reed and then to Justice Felix Frankfurter. In 1941, Graham was an attorney for the Office of Emergency Management and then for the Lend-Lease Administration. After joining the Army Air Corps as a private in 1942, he won a commission. During the war he helped to decipher the Japanese military codes and was an adviser to General George C. Kenney in the Philippine campaign. When discharged in 1945 he held the rank of major and had won the Legion of Merit. Graham's marriage into this journalistic family changed the direction of his career. Eugene Meyer induced him to give up plans to enter politics and join the Post organization. Graham became associate publisher on January 1, 1946. Six months later Meyer was named the first president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the full burden of directing the Post fell upon Graham. When Meyer returned to the Post after completing organization of the World Bank in six months, Graham continued the day-to-day direction of the paper as publisher, and Meyer became chairman of the board. In July 1948, Meyer transferred the voting stock of the newspaper to Philip and Katharine Graham. In his early years as publisher of the Post, Graham was under constant pressure to maintain the pace his father-in-law had set. Meyer had purchased the Post in 1933 through a bankruptcy sale and sustained it through nine years of huge losses, while circulation and advertising were gradually increased. During the war small profits were realized; but when Graham took over, the physical plant was inadequate, the staff undermanned and underpaid, and the paper in intense competition with three other Washington dailies. Knowing that financial success was essential to continued progress, Graham launched a broad-gauged campaign to upgrade every department. For this task he was well qualified despite his relative youth. A keen mind and a friendly disposition won him ready acceptance in the composing room no less than in the editorial and business departments. Eager and dynamic, Graham charmed his associates into moving forward with him. Under prodding from Graham, Meyer purchased radio station WTOP, and later a television station that became WTOP-TV. Both proved to be profitable investments, and this led to the purchase of additional broadcasting facilities. The Post set up a committee of eminent citizens to prevent its sale under any circumstances that might detract from its devotion to the public interest. Graham was also the moving spirit behind a stock-option plan for the company's business and editorial executives. Later he instituted a profit-sharing arrangement for employees and induced the Meyers to give $500, 000 worth of nonvoting stock in the Washington Post Company to 711 employees and circulation contractors. The great opportunity for the Post came in 1954, when Graham and Meyer purchased the Washington Times-Herald from Robert R. McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, thus bringing about probably the most successful merger in modern American journalism. The circulation of the Post was almost doubled. It suddenly vaulted into the position of Washington's leading newspaper and to ninth place among the great morning dailies of the country. In the years that followed, it grew rapidly in circulation, advertising, and journalistic influence in national affairs. In 1961, Graham bought Newsweek magazine. Graham's standing as a publisher was notably enhanced when his close friend Senator John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960 and a still closer friend, Lyndon B. Johnson, became vice-president. With these two friends occupying the highest offices in the land, Graham's great journalistic influence appeared to be at its height. Then came tragedy. As early as 1957 a siege of acute depression had sent him to Glen Welby, his Virginia farm, for several months of recuperation. After he returned to Washington, brilliant exploits were interspersed with manic-depressive spells. By the early 1960's these had brought him into conflict with President Kennedy, his associates at the Post, his wife, and many others. His erratic behavior led to three separate commitments to a psychiatric institution in Rockville, Maryland, two of them voluntary. On August 3, 1963, having obtained permission to go to Glen Welby with his wife, he ended his life with a shotgun.
Graham is best known as publisher and later co-owner of The Washington Post and its parent company, The Washington Post Company. 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.
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. In 1960, he helped persuade his friend John F. Kennedy to take Lyndon Johnson on his ticket as the vice presidential candidate, personally talking with both men multiple times 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 had multiple discussions with Kennedy about other appointments. In the several years after the inaugural, he continued to write 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.
President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1946)
On June 5, 1940, while Graham was still a law clerk, he married Katharine Meyer, a daughter of Eugene and Agnes Ernst Meyer, owners of the Washington Post. They had four children.
She was an American publisher and the first female publisher of a major American newspaper.
She is an American journalist who serves as senior associate editor of the Washington Post.
He is Chairman of Graham Holdings Company.
He was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963.
He was an American politician who served as the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, assuming the office after having served as the 37th Vice President of the United States from 1961 to 1963.
