英语美文名人励志故事11:Katherine Graham一生致力邮报的故事
11. Katherine Graham
11. 凯瑟琳·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.
我们可以有把握地说，没有几个妇女像凯瑟琳·格拉罕对20世纪美国历史有这么大的影响。她84岁去世时，各界人士纷纷赶往悼念，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.
凯瑟琳·迈耶 1917年出生在一个富裕的特权家庭。她的父亲是一位大富豪，他放弃了工作和政府部门的职位，在1933年买下了境况不佳的《华盛顿邮报》。凯瑟琳承袭了父亲对新闻的热爱，婚前在这家报社的编辑部工作了数年。
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.
她的丈夫菲尔·格拉罕曾是一位很出色的年轻律师，他1945年接管了华盛顿邮报。但后来他被躁狂抑郁症所折磨，病情日渐恶化，最后在凯瑟琳46岁时他自杀身亡。突然间，她感到管理邮报的责任落在了自己身上。
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.
格拉罕接管了邮报每日的运作。当她，以热忱和执着证明了那些曾怀疑她能力不足的人是错误的时候，他们都哑口无言。
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.
格拉罕从来不怕果断地作决定。她不听从邮报律师们的劝告，而支持她手下的编辑们，发表了《五角大楼文件》，这些文件是有关美国卷入越战的最高机密文件。即使面临政府施加的压力，要她不要再追究后来迫使尼克松总统下台的水门事件，她始终立场坚定。
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岁时，将掌管邮报的权力移交给了她的儿子。那时，她常被形容为美国最有影响的女人。无论这种说法是否正确，相信多数人都会认同她众多仰慕者之一给予的评价：没有她，华盛顿“就会是远不如现在文明的地方”。
