: Tuesday July 17 5:17 PM ET
: Washington Post's Katharine Graham Dead at 84
: By Deborah Zabarenko
: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Katharine Graham, the veteran top
: executive of The Washington Post who steered the paper to a
: Pulitzer prize for coverage of the Watergate scandal, died
: on Tuesday in Boise, Idaho. She was 84.
: Graham, the former Post publisher who was chairwoman of the
: executive committee of The Washington Post Co., suffered a
: head injury on Saturday in Sun Valley, Idaho, after a fall
: on a walkway at a conference of business leaders. She
: underwent surgery on Sunday and died at St. Alphonsus
: Regional Medical Center in Boise.
: Graham never regained consciousness after Saturday's injury,
: which caused massive bleeding in her brain. Her immediate
: family was at her bedside when she died, a hospital
: spokeswoman said.
: Born to a life of privilege in 1917 and shy by nature, Graham
: took sudden charge of The Washington Post media empire
: after the suicide of her husband, Philip Graham, in 1963.
: She put her stamp on the powerful newspaper and stood behind
: the Watergate expose that helped topple (U.S.) President
: Richard Nixon, making final decisions on the paper's
: coverage of the scandal despite legal pressures to keep it
: off Page 1.
: A prominent hostess, Graham invited presidents -- from John F.
: Kennedy to George W. Bush -- to her mansion in Washington's
: historic Georgetown section. Always immaculately turned
: out, with a gracious bearing that might have seemed at odds
: with the rough-and-tumble of the newsroom, Graham was a
: personal friend to many of the public figures her paper
: covered.
: 'STEELY YET SHY'
: Microsoft's Bill Gates and Berkshire-Hathaway's Warren Buffett
: were among those who entered her social circle. So were the
: late Princess Diana and foreign dignitaries ranging from
: Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic to Kenneth Kaunda of
: Zambia.
: ``Presidents come and go, and Katharine Graham knew them
: all,'' President Bush said in a statement. ``...Mrs. Graham
: became a legend in her own lifetime because she was a true
: leader and a true lady, steely yet shy, powerful yet
: humble, known for her integrity and always gracious and
: generous to others.''
: As the mother of four and the subservient wife of a troubled
: man, Graham never expected to run the Post, which her
: father Eugene Meyer had bought in 1933 in a bankruptcy
: sale. Her husband Philip published the paper until his
: suicide, and she took over months after his death.
: ``I felt awfully new and raw, and the job, even as I had
: limited it, looked very big,'' Graham wrote of her first
: days at the Post in her 1997 autobiography ``Personal
: History.'' She told a friend, ``I am quaking in my boots a
: little but trying not to show it.''
: She took over in September 1963; in November of that year, her
: friend President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
: More turbulent times lay ahead. The Post newspaper won a
: Pulitzer Prize for its relentless investigative coverage of
: the Watergate scandal and was then celebrated in a
: best-selling book and then a popular film, ``All the
: President's Men.''
: The book and movie recounted how Post reporters Bob Woodward
: and Carl Bernstein tracked the 1972 burglary of the
: Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate building
: back to the White House.
: Graham backed Woodward and Bernstein's coverage, despite
: attempts by the Nixon White House to keep the matter quiet.
: ``Kay was an extraordinary person, of course, a bereaved widow
: who surprised everyone with her strength, took over the
: Washington Post to make it one of the world's great
: newspapers,'' veteran CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite told
: CNN. ''She is greatly admired everywhere in the very
: competitive worlds of politics and publishing.''
: Nixon's secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, considered her a
: friend, and told CNN: ``Her legacy will be as a symbol of
: integrity, of courage and of high quality ... She is
: irreplaceable.''
: Graham is survived by her son Donald, chairman and chief
: executive officer of The Washington Post Co.; her daughter
: Lally Weymouth, a Washington Post and Newsweek journalist,
: of New York; her son William, an investor, of Los Angeles;
: her son Stephen Graham, a producer, philanthropist and
: doctoral student of English literature, of New York; 10
: grandchildren and one great-grandchild, and her sister Ruth
: Epstein of Bronxville, New York.
: The funeral service will be held Monday at 11:00 a.m. (1500
: GMT), at Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
: -----
In regards to Katherine Graham, I'm surprised the CIA
isn't having her memorial services at LANGLEY!-STARDUSTER
