Personal History Characters & Character Analysis

Personal History Important People

Phil Graham

Kay's husband Phil is the son of a gruff, hardworking farmer-politician father and schoolteacher mother, northerners who migrated to Florida before the Depression. Phil is born in Terry, South Dakota, in 1915 and spends a romantic childhood among the Seminole Indians. He attends a tough high school in Miami, where he learns to use wit to compensate for his size and lack of athletic ability. At the University of Florida, Phil enjoys fraternity life, girls and alcohol, proclivities he carries over to Harvard Law School, where he thrives, making the Law Review and being introduced to Felix Frankfurter, who takes him to Washington, DC, as his clerk on the Supreme Court. In 1940, after only a few dates, Phil proposes an elopement to Kay Meyer, and they wed quietly in Mt. Kisco. He works for Lend-Lease until Pearl Harbor, when he tries to enlist and is temporarily turned down. He...
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