Personal History (41 page)

The subject of his drinking was never openly discussed. When he was drinking, you couldn’t talk about it; when he went on the wagon, I always hoped for future restraint. The fights were never in public—the rage would explode after we had left a place and was usually about nothing substantive, nothing concrete that we could discuss. Rather, he seemed to seize on something as an excuse to vent his rage, which built up because of all the pressure he was under. Certainly these incidents could have been early signs of his later illness, but I never suspected that Phil was either ill or depressed, or that that might have been the reason for his drinking.

Despite these difficulties, I was completely immersed in Phil’s life. He always had a strong desire to communicate and hated being alone, so I accompanied him almost everywhere, and at home he liked me to sit and talk to him, even when he was in the bathtub. Consequently, I was very aware of everything in his day’s work—whom he had seen, what he’d done, how everything was going. He was particularly good at recounting what took place at his many stag evenings. His memory was so photographic that he could recite whole conversations or re-create entire evenings in minute and fascinating detail—it was almost better than being there, since he had a great sense of what was interesting and funny and a great aversion to what was tedious and boring.

In the early days, I often drove him down to the office or back or both. Many late evenings, I would sprawl out on the sofa in his office while he worked. We did very little apart from each other. One memorable time when I did do something separate was not soon repeated. Barry Bingham, owner of the
Louisville Courier-Journal
, who had become a friend, had invited us to the Kentucky Derby, but just before we were supposed to leave, Phil said he felt fluish and took to his bed. When I called the Binghams to tell them we couldn’t come, they suggested that I come alone. I distinctly remember being very surprised at being asked on my own, and I was reluctant to leave Phil when he was ill, but he insisted that I go, so I did. The weekend was an endless sea of parties and races, with the one important race happening so quickly that it was bewildering for someone new to racing. Still, I had a very good time, only to return to find Phil in a fit of anger. He admitted that, yes, he had urged me to go, but of course he hadn’t meant it and hadn’t liked being left alone in his sickbed.

Again, as with his drinking, I interpreted Phil’s delicate health and constant illnesses as the result of the strains on him and the fraught, competitive situation of the company. Looking back, I can see that these illnesses, too, were likely connected with his more basic health problem, of which there was no real sign yet. In retrospect I realize that the more difficult moments were definitely connected with mood swings. But I, and indeed the world, was dazzled by him. His wit, great energy, soaring imagination, and fervent desire for excellence—in himself and in others—were so strong that I ignored the fact that he was frequently using that wit at my expense. Phil was often critical or cutting in his remarks when things weren’t just right—either about the house or my clothes, for example, which left lots of room for disparaging remarks. Oddly, what I never perceived at the time was that, though he was lifting me up, helping me in so many ways, he also had a way of putting me down which gradually undermined my self-confidence almost entirely.

Nonetheless, Phil was the fizz in our lives. He was the fun at the dinner
table and in our country life. He had the ideas, the jokes, the games. He operated on the theory that it was important to do with the children only those things he himself enjoyed—no dull board games, but hunting, fishing, walking. His ideas dominated our lives. Everything rotated around him, and I willingly participated in keeping him at the center of things. In fact, I agreed with almost all his ideas.

I remember once I was complaining about having injured my knee by stepping on a ball on the tennis court. Feeling rather sorry for myself, in a plaster cast in the hot summer in Washington, I whined about “Why couldn’t I have stepped an inch to the right or an inch to the left of that ball?” I will always remember Phil looking at me, smiling, and saying, “Think of the ones you’ve missed”—not what I wanted to hear at that moment, but a truth that stayed with me for life. He always managed to get right through to the heart of the matter.

I learned such a lot from him, from the way he lived. His energy was infectious. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, as evidenced in his failure to mince words. I recall one night at the start of the Eisenhower administration when the new secretary of the Treasury, George Humphrey, and his wife came to dinner at our house. I overheard Mrs. Humphrey telling Phil what a great sacrifice George had made to come to Washington. To my horror, I heard Phil respond, “Would you mind if I told you something frankly, Mrs. Humphrey?” “Not at all,” was her reply—quite rashly, if she had known Phil better. “Well, Mrs. Humphrey,” Phil said, “making that remark in Washington is like belching at dinner in Shaker Heights. We think it’s quite a privilege to be secretary of the Treasury.” Needless to say, our relationship with the Humphreys never progressed much further.

A
S FOR THE
Post
, all our worrying and all of Phil’s efforts and hard work were beginning to take effect. The paper had its problems, to be sure, particularly over labor issues—the late 1940s had witnessed several short strikes and work slowdowns by the pressmen and stereotypers. Nevertheless, we were publishing ever-larger papers, occasionally equaling or even surpassing the
Star
. Important moves had been put in motion to improve further the paper’s quality and profitability—a television magazine boosted circulation; better technical resources in the new building allowed us to print a finer paper; experiments in using color on the paper added a new dimension; a broader profit-sharing plan for more employees gave people a real sense of belonging. The paper had come from bankruptcy to break even, more or less, with huge advances having been made in the business area, especially after John Sweeterman’s arrival. As Phil wrote to John, “How great are the obligations of this entire newspaper to
you! You have done all and more than I ever hoped for, and—wonder upon wonder—you have done it so quickly and calmly that many are unaware you have done it. You can be certain I am not among them.”

Despite McCarthy and the whole atmosphere of the times, which jeopardized the future of an independent newspaper, we were experiencing the highest advertising-and-circulation increases in our history. And great gains on the news-and-editorial side contributed to the
Post
’s being increasingly widely recognized. It’s a salutary nod to humility to realize just how much progress had been made by my father and by Phil with so few resources and such enormous odds against them. In the end, my father’s concentration on the basic principles had paid off handsomely. The year 1953 had been an especially good one for the
Post
, which Phil characteristically played down by saying it “does not mean we are ready for retirement, but at least we are a couple of steps ahead of the sheriff.”

What made the outlook even better was a letter my father received in the beginning of 1954—an event that led up to what I still think of as the defining moment for the company: the unexpected acquisition of the
Times-Herald
. The letter was a confidential one from his friend Kent Cooper, former general manager of the Associated Press, who was living in retirement in Palm Beach. Dad arrived at our door that morning, waving the letter in his hand, obviously excited, asking, “Where’s Phil?” I explained he had gone to Jacksonville. “I’ve got to talk to him right away. This is really important.”

My father then went to the
Post
, where he threw the letter on John Sweeterman’s desk and asked, “What do you think?” The letter read simply: “I am wondering whether you expect to be in Palm Beach any time soon for I would like very much to talk to you about a business matter of importance to you.”

Sweeterman replied, “I’m probably thinking the same thing you are.” They both knew that Cooper was a good friend of Colonel McCormick’s, that he lived near him, and that he was likely talking about the
Times-Herald
.

“Well, why don’t we find out?” replied my father, and immediately put in a phone call to Cooper. Cryptically, he asked, “Kent, this ‘business matter’ to which you refer, is it in the field of journalism?” Cooper said that it was. “Is it in Washington?” my father probed. Again Cooper said yes.

This was the moment we had fought for, worked for, and prayed for since 1933. After the disappointment in 1949, when the colonel had stepped in, our hopes that he would sell at all—much less sell to us—had all but vanished, so the excitement aroused by Kent Cooper’s letter was immense.

Several developments had occurred, some known to us, some not. Obviously, the staff of the
Times-Herald
could see that we had improved
our financial situation markedly. Their paper, on the other hand, was not doing nearly so well. In the end, Colonel McCormick, with all of his resources and the venerable
Chicago Tribune
behind him, turned out to be not nearly so formidable in Washington as we had assumed he would be.

The
Times-Herald
had gone through some transitions of its own. In 1951, the colonel had fired his niece and the
Times-Herald
publisher, Bazy Miller. Bazy had divorced her husband in January of that year, and a few months later she got married again, to a
Times-Herald
editor, Garvin Tankersley. The colonel, I was told at the time, didn’t like the idea of her divorcing a husband he liked and marrying someone in the office. More important, in the midterm elections of 1950 she had had printed at her newspaper’s plant an election-campaign tabloid,
From the Record
, which came from Senator Joseph McCarthy. In it, there was a forged picture of Maryland Senator Millard Tydings shaking hands with Earl Browder. Tydings, the incumbent, lost the election and charged that the tabloid helped defeat him.

All of this shocked the colonel, who was both straitlaced and ethical. He replaced Bazy with
Tribune
executives who didn’t understand anything about Washington or running a paper in the capital city. They put out a paper much like the
Tribune
, isolationist, right-wing, and with all the simplified spelling that had been used in Chicago: “sherif,” “fotograf,” and “burocrat.” So the problems for the
Times-Herald
began to mount. We had no idea that it had lost thousands of subscribers and was losing half a million dollars or more each year. Moreover, the colonel was getting along in years and his health was failing. His doctor wanted him to cut down his responsibilities, and the Washington paper, with all its headaches, seemed like the thing to let go.

Kent Cooper always claimed that it was he who persuaded McCormick to sell to us. Frank Waldrop viewed it another way—that the colonel, a generous man, had let Cooper be a go-between in order to give him some sort of finder’s fee. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. The colonel knew that the
Times-Herald
was worth more to the
Post
than to anyone else. Still, McCormick would have had to overcome his sharp difference of views with my father, as well as his resistance to selling out to his longtime competitor. On the plus side, what it all may have come down to is that McCormick actually had a great deal of respect for my father. Whatever his reasons, the colonel had decided to sell, and Kent Cooper sent the word. My father and John Sweeterman took an overnight train to Palm Beach and went straight to the Brazilian Court Hotel, where Phil met them. Then Phil and John left my father to talk to Kent Cooper alone.

The message was that Colonel McCormick wanted only to get out of the paper what he had put into it, which was $8.5 million. My father said,
“Done.” It was a bit lower than the outer limit they had set in their minds. Cooper stressed the need for complete secrecy and said that if there was any publicity the colonel would have to end the discussions. They left it that Cooper would phone my father later that afternoon, as soon as he had had a chance to talk to McCormick.

When Cooper phoned, he confirmed that McCormick wanted to sell but that he could not act without discussing matters with his stockholders. All of this would take several weeks’ time, since his doctors had told him he shouldn’t leave Florida before March 15; only after that would he meet in Chicago with his directors and stockholders and ask for authority to negotiate with my father. Cooper told us there was nothing to worry about, because we had McCormick’s word, which was good, but six weeks of holding our collective breaths seemed a lifetime.

Phil, John, and my father returned to Washington. The goal we had sought so long seemed within reach, but until it was signed, sealed, and delivered it was still only an exhilarating promise, almost too good to be true. The colonel sell to us? We had never dared hope for such a scenario.

My parents had planned a vacation trip to Jamaica and worried that they should postpone it. Phil urged them to go, which they did at the end of February. On Saturday, March 13, Cooper telephoned Phil to say that he would shortly be hearing from somebody representing the
Tribune
. Phil then cabled my parents to come home. At seven that same evening, the telephone rang. I answered it in the library. The caller was Chess Campbell, vice-president of the Tribune Company. When Phil got on the line, Campbell said, “I just can’t believe it, but I’m here to sell you the
Times-Herald.”

At nine that night, together with John Sweeterman, we met my parents at the airport and went back to Crescent Place with them; there the three men started making plans. Phil knew he had to work fast and in the greatest secrecy. He called Floyd Harrison, my father’s business right hand and also treasurer of the
Post
. He also called Frederick Beebe—or Fritz, as we knew him—our corporate and estate lawyer, who was with Cravath in New York. They all met at Crescent Place at 10:00 a.m. the next day. Phil, accompanied by Sweeterman and Harrison, then went off to meet with Campbell. Fritz, meanwhile, went to the offices of Covington & Burling, our Washington law firm, to begin work on a written offer for the
Times-Herald
, together with Fontaine Bradley and Gerry Gesell, who specialized in antitrust matters.