Personal History (116 page)

Joe Alsop himself was another great loss, one that came toward the end of the decade. In the last several years of his life, he and I had become closer than ever. Perhaps the fact that we were both alone then—he and Susan Mary had separated—strengthened our connection. The traffic and phone calls between our Georgetown houses were almost constant. I not only enjoyed Joe’s company but in some ways depended on it. We needed each other: he was important in my life, and I in his. More than almost anyone I knew, Joe gave pleasure and got pleasure. He once said, “Boredom, emptiness, complacency are the real enemies—and never experience!” And he was right.

I also lost my dear friend Luvie Pearson, on whom I had counted a great deal for so many years. She was wise, funny, brave, and tolerant. Her devoted friend Malcolm Forbes gave an eightieth birthday party for her on his yacht, which was then anchored in New York Harbor. Luvie looked
as beautiful as ever, her sculptured, bony face, lanky frame, and long blond hair seemed never to have changed. But she confided to me that she was getting less able to take care of herself—she was bothered by arthritis in her hands—and feared having to leave her tiny house in Georgetown for a retirement home. Two years later, just as her health was getting precarious, Luvie died suddenly, on a bridge weekend, exactly the way she would have wanted. Her absence left me very sad, but I couldn’t begrudge my friend her merciful death. She died the way anyone would hope to—with all her marbles, and not too painfully, too early, or too late.

Because I am at a point in my life where I am losing friends to death with increasing frequency, I have tried to follow Joe Alsop’s advice and example to keep developing younger friends. I do that both because I enjoy people of all ages and also to guard against loneliness. Polly, my closest friend for nearly fifty years, remains dear to me, always thoughtful, kind, energetic, funny, and brave. My friendship with Meg has grown and deepened over the years to an extent for which I am infinitely grateful. Liz Hylton, my treasured assistant who began working with me even before Phil’s death, remains my most consistent support. I am still close to my sisters Bis and Ruth, and we talk often and visit each other when we can.

B
Y THE LATE
1980s, the Washington Post Company was clearly a success. The stock had skyrocketed during Dick’s fine operating years beyond my wildest dreams, reaching $300 per share, amazing to me. We were outperforming our competition in all our divisions. Our quality was higher than ever. We were, as Warren once said, “maximizing a tail wind.”

Beyond Dick’s obvious contributions to the success of the company, I think there were several things that helped us achieve what we did. Some of our success had to do with being a family company. At the
Star
, family involvement got out of hand—too many families, for one thing—but I think that family-owned companies bring special qualities to the table and that family members can bring singular attributes to a business enterprise. Possibly, quality may be nourished most easily by a family, whose perspective extends beyond the immediate horizon. There are exceptions, to be sure, but family members can provide stability and continuity, and family ownership can prevent takeovers, which is important to smooth operations in this period of disruptive and often ill-considered mergers and acquisitions.

Another factor that nudged us along the way was that we never took success for granted. In all our divisions, our businesses competed hard in every sense with our direct competition. We tried never to lose a subscription we had a chance of holding. We worked never to let an inch or a dollar of advertising slip away without a fight. We always anguished over being beaten on a story—and still do.

I believe that our concentration on journalistic excellence was a good business approach as well as a necessary editorial strategy. I think that this was yet another reason for our ultimate success: that we operated under the philosophy—which I have espoused and practiced from the time I took over the company, and which I believe my father and Phil did before me and Don is doing now—that journalistic excellence and profitability go hand in hand. The reason for putting it that way in the beginning was to try to reassure Wall Street that I cared about profitability. We had spent large sums on building up the editorial products at the
Post, Newsweek
, and the stations and had risked a lot on publishing the Pentagon Papers as we were going public and the Watergate stories later. I wanted badly to answer the question of why anyone would invest in this company. I had to try to assure Wall Street that I wasn’t some madwoman, interested only in risks and editorial issues, but that I was also concerned with how we ran our business.

This twin concept had come to me not as a matter of profit margins and business goals but more as a problem of management. I thought if you did one thing well—focused on a quality product—the results would follow. It’s clear that the mathematics of such thinking didn’t seem to be with us; after all, in mathematical equations it is said that only one variable can be maximized at a time. But I think that we helped prove the compatibility of these two goals.

Ours was a good record and a good run, and it was finally beginning to be recognized as such by the industry. Warren was kind enough to talk about the company under my direction at a special awards lunch given in 1987 by the Center for Communications in New York, at which I was the guest of honor. He emphasized what he called the less-well-reported parts of the story of the company’s success. At that time our record of earnings-per-share increases was better than that of any of the outstanding companies in our field. The average growth for the top six media companies was 1,550 percent since 1964; ours—at 3,150 percent—was just more than double that. (What Warren didn’t say, of course, was how much his sage advice had had to do with this record.) Warren also joked to the group that he had once found a sheet of paper prominently displayed on my desk that said, “Assets on the left, liabilities on the right.”

In December 1988,
Business Month
ran a cover story on the “Five Best Managed Companies,” which put The Washington Post Company on this short list with Apple, Merck, Rubbermaid, and Wal-Mart. A few years later, I received
Fortune
magazine’s Business Hall of Fame award, a consummate and, for me, truly gratifying honor.

So much of the success for which we were being recognized was directly attributable to Dick. During his tenure, earnings per share grew at an annual compounded rate of 22.5 percent, and return on equity averaged
26 percent. Beyond whatever tangible accomplishments could be pointed to or measured, Dick set a high standard of professional management for the company. That’s why it was so difficult to think about his ever leaving. But almost from the beginning, he had warned me that he wanted to retire when he was still young enough to teach and to pursue some of his other interests.

As his ninth year at the company drew to a close, Dick began to talk about retiring, and at least a year before the company’s annual-meeting date in May 1991, he set the date for his departure. I prevailed on him to stay on the board and to remain as president of the
International Herald Tribune
for five years, so that we would maintain our close ties.

As 1991 dawned, it was clear to me that Dick’s impending departure meant that it was time for me to step down, too. I was always concerned lest inertia, or the lack of desire to give up, lead me to stay too long on the job. I had seen companies hurt or even ruined by an owner/CEO not stepping down at the right time, so I was glad when Dick’s move, in a sense, made up my mind for me. I also felt it was fitting that the new team of Don Graham as president and Alan Spoon, then serving as president of
Newsweek
but in line to succeed Dick as the company’s chief operating officer, move up together. So Dick and I stepped down at the same time from our positions as chief operating and chief executive officers.

In our 1991 annual report, Don wrote a lovely, personal, and highly unusual piece to find in an annual report. “If you’re looking for objectivity,” he began, “please turn the page.” He retraced my arrival on the scene, and my lonely place as the only woman in the Fortune 500 for so many years. He noted financial results and highlighted editorial issues and events since 1963. He recalled my residual self-doubts. “At a Christmas lunch,” Don wrote, “one of her guests asked everyone around the table what they wished they had done earlier in life. Most said they wished they’d been centerfielders or movie stars. Kay said she wished she’d gone to Harvard Business School”—which is still true of me today.

I was unsure how I would react at the inevitable moment of stepping down and worried that I would miss the authority and being the ultimate responsible person in the Post Company. Fortunately, it hasn’t been as difficult as I’d imagined. Perhaps part of this is because I relate well to both Don and Alan, and they are careful to keep me informed. Perhaps, too, it’s because it was a gradual departure for me. At the suggestion of several of the company’s directors, I retained the title of chairman for two and a half more years, relinquishing it in September of 1993, when I became chairman of the three-person executive committee of the company, consisting of Don and Alan and me.

Ben’s retirement, a few months after mine in 1991, when he reached the age of seventy, completed a smooth transition on the editorial side
from Ben and me to Len Downie and Don. The predictable negative stories appeared here and there to the effect that Don and Len were lower-key, more interested in local news, and more—well, boring. This was the same kind of story that had appeared about me when I was new: people are judgmental about young managers and like to compare them unfavorably with their predecessors. But Len had gradually taken over running the news side of the paper from Ben in the preceding five years, as Don had taken over the paper and some of what I did at the company—he’d already been publisher for more than twelve years when he became president, and later chairman.

Ben had indeed, as we said in our annual report that year, “redefined
The Post
for a generation of Washingtonians.” His retirement was a moving event—or series of events, I should say. It was all done as Ben did everything, with great style. Just before he walked out of the newsroom on August 31, there was to be a small farewell cake-and-champagne party for him. It turned into a mass uprising, with many spontaneous speeches and stories told about the legendary Ben—stories about people whose lives he had touched, so many uniquely Ben incidents, not all of them printable. No one wanted to leave. After three hours, Don remarked that one of the reporters had brought her new baby with her that day and the baby was about to celebrate her third birthday. On that note, Ben walked out of the newsroom and out of the building, but certainly not out of the life of the
Post
. He remains vice-president-at-large—a title at which he always grins—with an office on the
Post’s
executive floor. His energy and charm are undiminished. He is busy and happy and productive, and has written a fascinating and well-received memoir, a book in which we hear his true voice—the best kind of book.

Without the major responsibilities that went along with my title, I had to try to reshape my life, to give it some new form that would serve not merely to fill my days but to give some real meaning to what my friend Luvie used to call the “last lap.” It’s hard for people who leave power to relinquish certain enjoyable things—the inside seat, the privileged conversations, the ultimate responsibility, and the many other perquisites that go along with the kind of job I had had for so long. Admittedly, many of us get spoiled by all of the benefits of our jobs. I certainly did. But I also believe it’s healthy to have to return to a more normal life. There are advantages to private pleasures, probably more so if you have managed to maintain some balance during your years at the top, which I tried to do. But of course I am still spoiled in many ways—certainly by being able to pursue the myriad interests in my life and by having a staff both in the office and at home to support me in all that I do.

In configuring a new way of life, I tried to understand what I needed to retain from my old one. I knew it was important to keep active physically
and mentally. I have returned to playing bridge, which I love, and hope to take up golf and maybe even continue tennis. Most important, though, is to keep working; I knew that I essentially never wanted
not
to work. To me, working is a form of sustenance, like food or water, and nearly as essential. Perhaps this was a direct genetic inheritance from my parents. I knew, too, that, though I would still be involved with the company on a part-time basis, I needed something else.

Reorganizing my working life meant finding a new kind of balance. I focused initially on continuing to do some things for the company, and becoming more involved in education and writing these memoirs.

Why dare to write a book? What makes any of us think that someone else would be interested in stories from our own past? For me, there was a mixture of motives. I had been thinking about my parents, who, with their drive, discipline, eccentricity, and wealth, might be of interest even to nonfamily people. Also, I felt that Phil’s story had not been told. His brains, ability, and charm were legendary among his friends, but no one had written fully about him and his accomplishments, as well as about his devastation by his largely untreated manic-depression.

Partly, I wanted to look at my own life, because my personal history contains elements that were both unexpected and unrepeatable. I recognize the inherent danger of being self-serving and have tried to retain as much detachment as possible, but I wanted to tell what happened just as I saw it. And in the process, I hoped to arrive at some understanding of how people are formed by the way they grow up and further molded by the way they spend their days.

It is ironic that I became so intensely interested in education, which took up so much of my mother’s later life; possibly, this was another of her legacies to me. I believe, as she did, that education is not only the most important societal problem but the most interesting. Of course, there are countless numbers of education projects being implemented and enormous sums being spent across the country, but I wanted to do something simple and direct—perhaps make life a little better for a few children, without trying to prove anything or getting encumbered in a large bureaucracy. Along with a very able, inspiring, and determined younger partner, Terry Golden, I have helped launch an early-childhood education project in the Anacostia section of Washington, D.C. Though the project as a whole has grown larger than I had envisioned, it concentrates on two housing projects, Frederick Douglass Community Homes and Stanton Dwellings, and aims at helping mostly single and unemployed parents be involved in the education of their children. We have raised enough money to help create a community service center for parents, with a small day-care unit for up to fifteen infants, and a new school for one hundred Head Start children from the ages of two to four. Our hope is that this is a
/files/05/16/26/f051626/public/private endeavor that can be replicated in other areas of the District, as well as elsewhere. I anticipate continuing to work on education issues when this project ends.