Early Life
Philip (Phil) Leslie Graham was born in Terry, South Dakota. He was raised in Miami where his father, Ernest R. ("Cap") Graham, made a career in farming and real estate, and was elected to the State Senate. His mother, the former Florence Morris, had been a schoolteacher in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Graham was one of four children. One half brother, Bob Graham, is a former governor of the state of Florida (1979–1987) and a former United States Senator representing Florida from 1987 to 2005.
Graham attended Miami High School and graduated from the University of Florida in 1936, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics, and from Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review and earned a magna cum laude degree, in 1939. Graham was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (Florida Upsilon chapter) and was both a fraternity brother and roommate of the late Senator George A. Smathers whom he had been close to since attending Miami High School with Smathers. In 1939–1940 he was law clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice Stanley F. Reed, and the following year he was clerk to Justice Felix Frankfurter, who had been one of his professors at Harvard.
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