[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 104 (Tuesday, July 24, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8108-S8109]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  SPECIAL TRIBUTE TO KATHARINE GRAHAM

  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, 1 week ago today Katharine Graham died. 
Yesterday, she was buried next to her husband, my half brother, Philip 
Graham. I have known Katharine for all but 3 years of my life. She 
married Phil in 1940, after what might be called a whirlwind courtship. 
After the honeymoon she came and, for the first time, visited her new 
in-laws. I was 3 years old at the time.
  Mr. President, I was not a good boy at the age of 3. Some would 
suggest that there has not been much improvement in the intervening 
years. But my first encounter with Kay, as recorded in her memoirs, was 
as she sat at the desk writing her thank-you notes for her wedding. I 
toddled up and, I regret to say, spat upon Kay. She went to my mother 
and asked what was the significance of this behavior. My mother said, 
``Don't worry, he does that to lots of people.'' Despite that 
inauspicious beginning, this became a wonderful relationship that added 
much to my knowledge, to my values, to my appreciation and joy of life.
  I was one of many thousands who had the opportunity to know Katharine 
Graham and be influenced by her exceptional personality. There have 
been many statements made about Kay in the last week, describing her 
range of accomplishments. I want to talk about Kay as a journalist and 
teacher. She understood the role of journalism in American life--to 
provide people the knowledge they would require to be empowered to be 
effective citizens in a democracy.
  It is not the purpose of journalism to tell people how to think, or 
to select what information should be available to them. Rather, it is 
the purpose of journalism to provide the readers the full range of 
information from which they can make their own judgments.
  Kay also led by example. The standards she set and lived by were 
themselves an important part of her role as journalist and teacher.
  She liked politicians. Those who attended or observed yesterday's 
funeral service saw the number of people from this institution, current 
and past, and from other political segments of our society, who were 
there to honor her and to represent the friendships they had 
established.
  She understood, in a way that my brother Phil probably did not, that 
politicians and journalists have different responsibilities in our 
democracy. Though they do not have to be adversaries, each side must be 
careful not to compromise their particular responsibility in an effort 
to be excessively deferential or even excessively friendly with the 
other side of that delicate occasion.
  I think if Kay were here, she might agree that there are some 
particular aspects of her life which she has shared with people in our 
profession of politics. She might even admit that those aspects provide 
lessons from which we can and should learn.
  The first is the lesson of compromise. Midway through her remarkable 
career as publisher of the Washington Post, Kay wrote about the 
importance of compromise in our democracy. This was at a time when some 
were saying that compromise was a sign of weakness, and that to give in 
to the other side, to not demand absolute concurrence with your stated 
beliefs, was a sign of weakness. As Kay so properly observed, that is a 
distortion of democracy. Democracy is a government of the people. By 
necessity, it requires all the people, representing all of their 
different backgrounds, values, perspectives and aspirations, to find a 
common ground upon which we can then move forward. Compromise is not a 
sign of weakness, it is a sign of the strength of our unique form of 
government.
  Kay believed in this in her personal behavior. If you had been 
fortunate to have dinner at her table, there were a number of rules her 
guests were expected to follow. One of those rules was that you did not 
engage in a series of one-on-one conversations with the person who 
might be seated to your left or to your right, but rather the whole 
table was encouraged to bring the conversation to the center so that 
everyone would share what was being said, and by that sharing, the 
level of the conversation would be elevated and the value would be 
enhanced. Kay was a strong believer in encouraging effective 
participatory discussions, which would lead to those compromises and, 
in turn, lead to policies that would enhance our society.
  Kay also was a person of great self-confidence. I believe one of the 
great attributes of a human being, particularly a human being who lives 
in the public arena, is non-arrogant self-confidence, which I would 
define as meaning that you have a set of core values, that you are not 
a person who waits for the next wind to come and fill your sail, but 
that you also understand your own limitations and are open to new 
information, to new perspectives on the information you already have. 
If such a person can be convinced over time that a previous position 
deserves to be modified based on new information, that person is 
prepared to do so.
  Kay had many times in her life when she was challenged to exercise 
that principle of non-arrogant self-confidence. Probably the most 
stressful period in her life, and the period of her life that has 
received great recognition now in her passing, was the time that 
surrounded the Vietnam war through the Watergate era.
  At one point, when things were particularly tense and it appeared as 
if the Washington Post alone--and she alone as the leader of the 
Washington Post--were under unusual duress, she asked of her colleagues 
at the Post: If we're so sure we're right, where is everybody else? Why 
aren't there some other people, some other newspapers that are prepared 
to pick up this same cause? That question could have led to a decision 
to abandon the cause because of its loneliness. Instead, she saw it as 
a challenge and recognized an even greater necessity to proceed.
  We in politics from time to time may find ourselves as the only one 
or a member of a very small minority on a particular point of view. We 
must have enough self-confidence in our judgment and values that we are 
prepared to persist, and frequently, by so persisting, we will alter 
the opinion of others. At the very least, in the examination of 
history, we may have the experience of having our positions validated.
  A third quality that Kay represented and which I suggest is a 
valuable quality for those in the profession of politics is a 
commitment to lifelong growth. There is a tendency in any area of human 
endeavor, but I think it is a particularly persistent one in politics, 
for people to reach a certain level of achievement and accomplishment, 
then say ``this is the position I will hold for the rest of my life.' 
Often, as people become more powerful in political positions, they also 
become narrower in terms of their own sense of the challenge of 
constant growth.
  The Greeks recognized this over 2,000 years ago. One of the ways they 
tried to overcome this tendency was to require that all of the citizens 
of Greece periodically leave behind their trappings of power, prestige, 
and wealth and take on all of the tasks the Greek Republic required. It 
might be a menial task of working in the sewer plant of Athens, or it 
might be as commander of the Athenian Navy. The belief was that any 
well, liberally educated Greek citizen was capable of performing any 
task that would be assigned to them.
  In many ways, Kay lived a life that had that Athenian sense of what a 
liberated, educated Athenian could do and how they might live their 
life in order to constantly challenge the perimeters that others would 
like to put around them.
  She lived, in essence, over her 84 years two lives. Her first life 
for approximately 40 years was as a young

[[Page S8109]]

girl born to privilege, a wife, a mother, a person content to live in 
comfort, to live in the background, to eat at the women's table, to 
live in a woman's world.
  For the next 40 years, she was a woman, through tragedy, called upon 
to suddenly take on enormous responsibility. She had to learn, and 
learn fast, about the business and about journalism. She had to learn 
about the intersection of journalism and politics. She learned about 
the reality of the role of women in all of these worlds, and she 
mastered them greatly.
  In her seventies she learned about herself. She committed to write 
her memoirs with the idea that they would give to her children and 
grandchildren and future generations an insight on her, her family, her 
husband, her mother and father, those things that had influenced her 
life. She decided to do this without the assistance of a ghostwriter or 
someone who would put her words on paper. Rather, she took up pen and 
yellow paper and for 7 years wrote her memoirs.
  At the conclusion, she had accomplished her objective of having 
placed for all time her life on paper. She also saw some results which 
were probably unexpected. She changed the way that many women looked at 
themselves and looked at their possibilities.
  Yesterday, at the funeral, a woman in a wheelchair told me about how 
much Kay Graham's life had meant to her when she was unexpectedly 
handicapped. She thought she had lost the opportunity to challenge 
herself or reach for her potential. Through Kay's example, she gained a 
renewed confidence her own potential.
  Kay's memoirs also changed the way in which we think about the 
writing of autobiographies. It is not a book of histrionics. It is not 
a book meant to make people necessarily feel good or to placate and to 
soften events in the past. It is written with a directness of one 
friend talking to another with great candor. And it also was a lesson 
of what is possible.
  At the age of 80, after 80 years of living, including 7 years of 
writing, Kay's memoirs won the Pulitzer Prize. What an enormous 
statement about a life which at every stage is one of growth and 
unwillingness to accept limitations.
  I believe these examples of the lessons of compromise, of self-
confidence, and of constant life growth are just part of the legacy 
that Katharine Graham has given to our society. I believe in these she 
speaks particularly to those in our profession of politics. Their 
proper learning and absorption will be of great value to us.
  These are examples I will be honored to attempt to emulate. My only 
regret is that she will not be here to critique my performance.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I would like to join my colleagues today in 
paying tribute to a great woman, Katharine Meyer Graham, whose untimely 
passing saddens those of us who had the pleasure, indeed the privilege, 
of knowing her. Her courage, determination and style are an inspiration 
to all of us in public service.
  There are far too many cynics in this town, and unfortunately, there 
is far too much to be cynical about. But, at the end of the day, it is 
people like Kay Graham who have inspired and mentored a new generation 
of idealism, of American youths who strive to be the very best in all 
their chosen fields of endeavor. And that is the true story behind her 
unflagging support of two young, obscure, city-desk reporters who broke 
a story that changed our Nation forever.
  There is much I will miss about Kay Graham. I could talk for hours 
about her many outstanding accomplishments, as a wife, a mother, and a 
publisher. But she was also a true and loyal friend to many, an 
incredible force for good. Kay was one of the most powerful women in 
our world, but what I remember most about her is that she was genuinely 
a nice person.
  And so, today, let us pay tribute to Kay Graham's greatness and 
goodness, in public and in private. I hope the world will also learn a 
little more about her kindness, her humility, and the sense of charity 
that never left her.
  Mr. President, one of the most touching tributes I can recall vividly 
describes the cycle of life and our profound transition. It likens our 
passage to the journey of a magnificent sailing ship, gliding through 
deep blue water, growing smaller and smaller as the sea meets the sky. 
And when the ship fades silently from sight, just as we think she is 
gone, we are reassured to know that on the opposite shore . . . she 
awaits.

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