英語美文名人勵志故事11:Katherine Graham一生致力郵報的故事

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11. Katherine Graham

11. 凱瑟琳·格拉罕

It could safely be said of Katherine Graham that few women had a greater infulence on 20th-centllry American history. When she died at the age of 84, peop1e from all walks of life were swift and generous in their eulogies.

我們可以有把握地說，沒有幾個婦女像凱瑟琳·格拉罕對20世紀(jì)美國歷史有這么大的影響。她84歲去世時，各界人士紛紛趕往悼念，表示敬意。

Katherine Meyer was born in 1917 to a wealthy and fami1y. Her father was a multimillionaire who gave up business and government service to buy the Washington Post in 1933. Katherine shared his love of journalism, and worked on the paper's editing desk for a few years before getting married.

凱瑟琳·邁耶 1917年出生在一個富裕的特權(quán)家庭。她的父親是一位大富豪，他放棄了工作和政府部門的職位，在1933年買下了境況不佳的《華盛頓郵報》。凱瑟琳承襲了父親對新聞的熱愛，婚前在這家報社的編輯部工作了數(shù)年。

Her husband, Phil Graham, was a bright young lawyer who took over at the Post in 1945. But Phil suffered from manic depression later, which gradually got worse, culminating in his suicide when Katherine was 46. Suddenly, she found herself in control of the Post.

她的丈夫菲爾·格拉罕曾是一位很出色的年輕律師，他1945年接管了華盛頓郵報。但后來他被躁狂抑郁癥所折磨，病情日漸惡化，最后在凱瑟琳46歲時他自殺身亡。突然間，她感到管理郵報的責(zé)任落在了自己身上。

Graham took over the day-to-day running of the paper Skeptics who had doubted her ability to make a success of it were dumbfounded as her enthusiasm and tenacity proved them wrong.

格拉罕接管了郵報每日的運(yùn)作。當(dāng)她，以熱忱和執(zhí)著證明了那些曾懷疑她能力不足的人是錯誤的時候，他們都啞口無言。

Graham was never afraid of making a courageous decision. Against the advice of the Post's lawyers, she sided with her editors and published the Pentagon Papers. The papers were top secret documents about the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. She later remained steadfast in the face of government pressure not to pursue the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

格拉罕從來不怕果斷地作決定。她不聽從郵報律師們的勸告，而支持她手下的編輯們，發(fā)表了《五角大樓文件》，這些文件是有關(guān)美國卷入越戰(zhàn)的最高機(jī)密文件。即使面臨政府施加的壓力，要她不要再追究后來迫使尼克松總統(tǒng)下臺的水門事件，她始終立場堅定。

Graham handed over the control of the Post to her son in 1991, when she was 74 years old. By that time, she was often being described as the most powerful woman in America. Whether or not that was true, few would disagree with the assessment of one of her many admirers, that without her, Washington "would have been a much less civilized place."

1991年，葛拉罕74歲時，將掌管郵報的權(quán)力移交給了她的兒子。那時，她常被形容為美國最有影響的女人。無論這種說法是否正確，相信多數(shù)人都會認(rèn)同她眾多仰慕者之一給予的評價：沒有她，華盛頓“就會是遠(yuǎn)不如現(xiàn)在文明的地方”。