Retropod is sponsored by Tito's handmade vodka. Drink responsibly.

Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

Catherine Graham, Cade of Friends, Mrs. Graham to everyone else, was a revered figure in journalism and on the world stage.

She used to run the Washington Post. She battled Nixon.

She fought to publish the Pentagon Papers.

She defended the First Amendment against all comers.

She was even portrayed by Merrill Streep in Steven Spielberg's film called The Post.

But it was her fierce leadership during the pressman strike,

stuffing newspapers, commanding helicopters, playing hardball at the negotiating table,

that is perhaps the most ripping, resolute moment in her life.

It began with a riot.

Mrs. Graham was sound asleep.

Union contracts had expired at midnight on October 1st, 1975, and Mrs. Graham went to bed that night, ready to continue negotiations in the morning.

Then the phone rang at 4.45 a.m.

An executive at the paper delivered the news.

The presses had been, as Mrs. Graham described it later, Pearl Harbored.

The pressman set one press on fire and dismantled others.

They beat up the foreman, holding a screwdriver to his throat.

The first decision Mrs. Graham made was to let her chauffeur keep sleeping.

Mrs. Graham drove herself to the post toward the fire trucks and smoke on 15th Street in northwest Washington.

She parked her green Mercedes on the street outside the post, making her way inside past firefighters, picketers, and TV crews.

She went directly to the press room.

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