“You know, Howard, a decade ago, I was the only woman head of a Fortune 500 company. Now, a decade later, I’m still the only woman head of a Fortune 500 company.”

—Katharine Graham to reporter Howard Fineman in 1984, quoted on Newsweek.com

When I was five years old, I moved to the Washington, D.C. area and discovered the Washington Post.

I was meeting Katharine Graham and I didn’t even know it.

The Post was the first thing I read every day until I left for college. Half the fights my brother and I had growing up were over who got to read the Sports and Style sections first. We clamored over Metro, debated national and international news, spent Sunday mornings lingering over comics and Book World. As I grew older and began writing myself, I made it a ritual to read every word, every day. When I went to college, I found myself missing the heft and wit of this capital newspaper. By that time, like any soul who lived and breathed within the Beltway (and an extraordinary number from without), I knew damn well who Katharine Graham was, and what she stood for.

Katharine Graham died three days ago, in Idaho, far from the city that loved her. The next day, the Washington Post was crowded with her life. I went out and bought a copy, and swallowed each sentence they wrote about her.

Who am I to write anything about Katharine Graham? Ah, but that’s exactly it. Compared to the scope of a life as grand as Katharine Graham’s, I was just a little girl in Washington who wanted to be a journalist. There were—are—lots of us. We watched her.